You know, despite my efforts -- my intense efforts -- to do nothing, things happen anyway.
A couple weeks back, when I caught up with Walking and Talking, I wanted to watch it in tandem with Noah Baumbach's directorial debut Kicking and Screaming since they came out around the same time (Kicking in 1995, Walking one year later) and they're both about young adults beginning to make their way in the world (and yes, because they both have "____ing and ____ing" titles), but Kicking didn't get returned to the library in time for that to happen. Of course, as the joke which is told in the film by perpetual student/bartender Eric Stoltz goes, how do you make God laugh? Make a plan. I'll bet God got at least a chuckle out of that one.
Almost without exception, the characters in Kicking don't have any idea what they want to do with their lives after college graduation (which doesn't give God a whole lot to grin about). A few (frustrated writer Josh Hamilton, sarcastic philosopher Chris Eigeman, indecisive would-be grad student Carlos Jacott) get a house together near campus out of inertia more than anything else. Another (Jason Wiles's pricelessly named Skippy) audits some classes so he can be near his girlfriend (Parker Posey), who still has her senior year to get through. The only one who manages to escape their orbit is Hamilton's ex (Olivia d'Abo), a fellow writer who's spending a year in Prague and is mostly seen in flashbacks sprinkled throughout the film. Other than that, her only presence in the present is a series of messages left on Hamilton's very dusty answering machine, but she's in good company since he generally lets it pick up when his father (Elliott Gould), a sad sack in the process of getting separated from his mother, calls as well.
Not a whole lot of consequence happens, but that's to be expected since all of the characters are basically rudderless. Good thing, then, that they spend a lot of their time tossing off sardonic quips like they're going out of style. (One example: "What I used to be able to pass off as just another bad summer could now potentially turn into a bad life.") Maybe eventually they'll get their acts together, but that would probably take some planning.