The 1993 Richard Linklater film is an absolute classic as far as both the 90s independent film scene and coming of age genre are concerned. It featured an absolutely stupid number of beloved actors from the decade and beyond, a soundtrack that’s still a summertime staple, and made good on the promise exhibited by Linklater in his 1990 feature debut, Slacker, too while we’re at it. Nothing quite beats the comradery shared it’s cast on screen, the gentle existential themes, and the way that the film manages to make every second of it’s plot feel simultaneously lived in and larger than life.

The movie is one of my favorite things to put on every summer, as I’ve often started or ended the summer for the past decade with a screening of the film. Which naturally meant that I’ve had it on my mind for the past couple of weeks and was interested in making a video about it. But the thing is, I don’t really have anything I can say about it other than the fact that it’s a very good movie. Everything else has kinda already been covered, ya know? Like, the only real thing I can offer to any discussion of it is that I wish there were more movies like it.

Which got me thinking about the various elements I enjoy in the movie and what other films might have them too. And, in case you’ve forgotten the name of this article already, that’s what I’m here to talk about.

I’m gonna sit down and fire off five movies (and a bunch of honorable mentions) that I think fans of this classic 70s coming of age flick would enjoy.

Everybody Wants Some!!

Kicking things off, we’ve got the most obvious movie in the bunch, 2016’s Everybody Wants Some!! 

If there was ever going to be a more obvious choice for this video, it’s gotta be this one and the next film I’ll be talking about. Everybody Wants Some!!  was Richard Linklater’s followup to Boyhood and is, in the directors words, a spiritual follow up to it. However, it also may as well be called Dazed and Confused 2: Electric Confusedaloo. Whereas Dazed followed a bunch of high schoolers, primarily an incoming senior class, on the last day of school, Everybody Wants Some is all about a mens college baseball team. The story is framed around an incoming freshman named Jake in the week leading up to his first semester, and follows him through getting to know his team, going out to party, and his impending college experience. So it’s basically the other side of the coin that was Dazed and Confused, down to also being a period piece that’s set in 1980 as opposed to 1976 like it’s forebearer was.

The film has the same general vibe and tone as it, similarly features some faces you might recognize like, I don’t know, freaking Glen Powell, and was undersung enough when it released to fly under enough peoples radar to feel like a worth recommendation. It’s kinda weird how many people haven’t seen this movie. It came out my senior year of college and, despite the fact that I was studying media production and film in an environment surrounded by people who enjoyed stuff like Boyhood and Dazed, never heard about it once. Which is a total shame because it might even beat Dazed and Confused at a few of it’s own tricks. For example, there’s a scene where the characters are jamming out to Rapper’s Delight in their car, and I’d argue that it’s more fun than it’s Dazed and Confused composite when they were driving around to Lowrider.

It’s worth mentioning that this film is an interesting insight into Linklater’s formative years too, as he revealed that this movie was basically what he was like as a teenager in an episode of the excellent (but unfortunately no longer active) Off Camera with Sam Jones podcast.

More than anything, though, Everybody Wants Some!! is blast. Self indulgently into itself and the bravado it positions, but in a way that is a total delight thanks to it getting balanced against a liberal gloss of Linklater’s more wallflower qualities. If you liked the football players from Dazed, imagine them being a bit more meatheaded, and you basically have this movie. I found it to be a great trip down memory lane because of how universal its characters were. They’re the type of people that we’ve all met before and they’re definitely Linklater characters.

And again, it features Glen Powell. If you liked him in Top Gun: Maverick, Hit Man, or Twisters, you’ll love him in this. The guy’s got a 70s baseball stache and everything. 

American Graffiti

Coming up next, we’ve got another obvious choice: American Graffiti. At the risk of pissing off any Star Wars fans in the audience, I’m just gonna come out and say that I think this is George Lucas’ best film, and there’s no denying the influence it had on Dazed and Confused, either. In fact, it’s basically the blueprint for it.

The story goes as follows; it’s the last day of summer in 1962, and we’re invited to join a–you guessed it– absolutely stacked cast for their last night together before college. You’ve got Ron Hoaward and Cindy Williams as a bickering couple, Richard Drefus as an unlucky in love joe schmo, and a pre-Han Solo Harrison Ford as a drag racing badass. Similar to Dazed, we also have a character’s younger sibling crashing the fun too, as well as a classic radio-friendly soundtrack to enjoy. In fact, it’s one of the first movies to make use of that type of soundtrack too.

If you haven’t seen this one and loved the nostalgic depiction of the 70s from Dazed and Confused, you’ll feel right at home here. Its depiction of the 60s leans more to the 50s than anything (to the point where some folks online seem to forget what decade it really took place in), but it’s done with a special kind of reverence for the era that’s hard not to smile at. The film is based on Lucas’s upbringing in Modesto, which makes it a fascinating look into yesteryear. He approached directing the film a lot like he was directing a documentary, and that lends it a special sort of authenticity. There’s a lot of shallow focused shots in this movie that make parts of it almost feel a little drunk and like it’s teetering on collapse. It sucks you into the events on screen and makes it easy to imagine you’re there going through everything the characters are. 

As if that weren’t enough, you can even see shades of Star Wars start to come together in this movie. Aside from the obvious Harrison Ford connection, American Graffiti has a chipper, nostalgic tone that feels in step with the generally upbeat and adventurous A New Hope. To crib an idea expressed in that fluffy Empire of Dreams Star Wars doc from the 2000’s, it’s an example of a movie just wanting to be fun. 

Additionally, and this’ll just be a bonus movie rec for the hell of it, it even got a sequel in 1979 that I think is criminally underrated. That film’s called More American Graffiti and, while it’s a little disjointed thanks to being spread across New Years Eve in several different years, is a great take on doing a sequel to a coming of age story. Rather than force it’s main characters to come together for some contrived reason, it only kinda allows their stories to intersect and instead makes a point of showing how their lives had gone after the first movie ended. It builds off of the loose storytelling in the original by giving us three short stories to dip in and out of, and ends up covering everything about the 60s that the original didn’t in the process. If the first movie covered mainstream 60s culture at the start of the decade, this one veers closer to Dazed territory by depicting how counterculture seeped into things just a few years later.

And speaking of bonuses, here’s some trivia for you: It’s also the closest thing we’ll ever get to seeing any of George Lucas’s legendary pitch for Apocalypse Now since he ghost directed some of Vietnam War scenes in it. 

It doesn’t quite live up to the original at the end of the day, but hey, if you’re still looking for something to scratch that Dazed and Confused itch after enjoying a screening of American Graffiti, More American Graffiti is exactly what the name implies it is. 

It’s still got the heart that made the original iconic.

Didi

Okay, so my third recommendation is actually a movie that some of you may still be able to catch in theaters. If not, though, it’ll probably be on digital by September anyway on a streaming service not too long after that. Anyway, the movie I wanna stop to talk about is called Didi, and it’s a great coming of age flick from the POV of an Asian American teen in California. 

Other than the fact that I just wanted an excuse to gush about this movie for a minute since I think it’s a monumental directorial debut, it’s also a great compliment to Mitch Kramer’s arc in Dazed and Confused. Like Mitch, this film’s protagonist Wang Wang is about to become a high school freshman and is trying to navigate what that means for him. He’s reconsidering his friendships, he’s developing feelings for girls for the first time, and he’s experimenting with drugs and alcohol. But unlike Mitch, Didi lenses all of this through the experience of being an Asian American in the 2000’s. There’s social media, and skater culture thrown in the mix, and it’s all done so freaking well. You really get a sense for the feelings of confusion and aimlessness that comes with being a kid that isn’t particularly good at anything, and how it feels to be at a crossroads of being a kid, and becoming a young adult. Wang Wang is too young to do anything, but he’s also too old to do nothing, and it makes for a great hour and a half watch. Even better, the movie still manages to work if you aren’t familiar with culture in the aughts; in fact, it may even work better if you aren’t. In part because Wang Wang is a first generation American and a pre-teen on top of that, he lacks a tight grip of many American hallmarks since his parents may not have been familiar with them for themselves. For example, he hasn’t seen movies like Star Wars or ET before, nor is he familiar with Facebook at first. It might exaggerate the feelings of otherness that he feels and strengthens the drive of the movie to be as lost as he is.

But if you are familiar with that era, you’re still in for a great ride. I had a moment when I was watching this movie in theaters where I basically had to take a step back from realizing just how well of a job it was doing in capturing what it felt like to be Wang Wangs age. I was the same age as the character when this movie takes place, and lost count of the number of times that I basically did the Leo pointing meme at the screen. Pretending to be into Paramore to get your crush’s attention? Check. Running home to scrub your YouTube channel of embarrassing home videos so that people you want to befriend don’t think you’re lame? Check. Feeling vaguely embarrassed by your heritage and not knowing how to interact with them because you’re a dumb kid who doesn’t know better? Check.

I didn’t say I was proud of any of them, okay?

It’s wild seeing a movie like this due to my proximity to the time it takes place in. So if you were a teenager in the late 2000’s, or have a kid or sibling who was, consider checking this one out. It may not perfectly line up with Dazed and Confused’s tone, but that shouldn’t stop you from having a good time with it. Additionally, it does have its moments of Linklaterness to it too, specifically in the scenes when Wang Wang is talking to his mother, which I felt almost worked as a compliment to Mason’s relationship with his parents in Boyhood.

Kicking and Screaming

The fourth movie I wanna recommend today is Noah Baumbach’s 1995 debut feature Kicking and Screaming, not to be mistaken with the Will Ferrel soccer movie from ten years later.

Baumback’s movie is a charming indie coming of age story about a group of guys that are stumbling through life after graduating from college. They’re aimless, they’re a little repressed, and they’re the perfect vessel for the earliest notes of Baumbach’s deadpan, existential dialogue that he would go on to refine over the years. It’s a little Woody Allen in how learnt and casually philosophical it can be, and it’s a little American Graffiti in how juvenile it feels too. If I had to ascribe any of Dazed and Confused’s qualities to this film, it has to be in how unabashedly bro-like the characters are in this, as well as how listlessly wordy the dialogue is. It also features Baumbach in a cameo where he takes a moment to ask the real questions. 

In all seriousness, there’s a lot to love about this movie. Some might find it a bit self-indulgent and lacking in the punch other Baumbach’s have, but I think a lot of that can be excused with it being his first crack at a feature. And, if you’re a fan of the non football playing seniors from Dazed, there’s a good chance that you’ll get a kick out of the ensemble of this film too. Sure, Frances Ha may have covered similar themes of aimlessness in a clearer, more emotionally resonant way, but there’s something frank and honest to the how Baumbach approaches the material here. He was like 25 or 26 when this got made, so the fact that it feels as mature as it does is a minor miracle. Plus, its rougher edges are peak 90s independent cinema and embody the movement that Linklater helped define with his debut Slacker. Speaking of which, Kicking and Screaming may not be visually similar to Dazed itself, but parts of it almost feel like a more focused version of the aforementioned Slacker, as well as Linklater’s often undersung 1996 film SubUrbia. Two movies, mind you, that likely would have made this list if I hadn’t already recommended Everybody Wants Some!!. Slacker was once called a “14 course meal composed entirely of desserts” by Vincent Canby in the New York Times, and I feel like the same could be said about this movie on some level.

Another thing I couldn’t help but notice in relation to Dazed with this one was how one of it’s characters ends up crushing on a teenager. There’s a certain ick to it that gets a little glossed over, and that felt about in line with Wooderson’s character from the Linklater movie. At any rate, the point of that interaction is to depict how emotionally stunted the character in question is and it does succeed in that regard. Now that I think of it, that was also a plot point in American Graffiti. Huh. Weird.

Honorable Mentions:

Before we go on, I wanna take a moment to list some honorable mentions, along with a few lines about why I think they’d make great watches. 

The first one I’d like to shout out is Booksmart, another newer entry in the coming of age genre. The movie is Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut and follows a pair of best friends as they attempt to make the best of their high school graduation and cut loose by attending a party. It’s more of an update on the frat-adjacent party comedy than it is a Linklater homage, but I felt that the inclusion of a huge party scene and some of its themes pull it close enough to be worth mentioning. 

Following up on that, we have Adventureland, which is one of my favorite coming of age movies in general. It’s got a great cast, including Ryan Reynold’s in a surprisingly off type but simultaneously kinda on type role, one of my favorite 80s soundtracks for a movie that wasn’t made in the 80s, and even features a score by Hoboken’s own Yo La Tengo. Gah, I love this band and the score so much. It should come as no surprise to anyone who even remotely knows me that I wrote my first book Guppy Falls to it.

And while we have New Jersey on the mind, our next honorable mention goes to Kevin Smith’s Mallrats. I’m going to keep this one especially short since I don’t think it’s really that good of a movie, but I picked it because Smith was directly influenced by Linklater when he made Clerks, Mallrats and Dazed feature a pre-Good Will Hunting Ben Affleck, and the movie features some vaguely ponderous dialogue and that scrappy 90’s indie feel. 

Next, here’s one that I think is a bit of a curveball: Ocean’s 12. I know how crazy that sounds on paper, but just hear me out. One of the reasons I absolutely adore this movie is because it borders on being a hangout movie where the George and his Goons McCloon are stuck in an endless loop of trying to figure out how to one-up their heist from the previous movie. And something about the way they go through the motions of that scratches a very similar itch to the way the characters of Dazed and Confused try to improvise their way to having an epic night. They’re both movies about bros being bros, and live and die by their banter and the chemistry of their ensemble.

As for my last honorable mention, I’m gonna go super commercial and pick a movie that sounds like it shouldn’t be a good fit but might be. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. While the movie is a much more conventional tale of teenage antics than Dazed is, it’s another coming of age tale that’s heavy on the comradery of friends and the rejection of authority, and features a soundtrack of wall to wall bangers. Not to mention, contrasts are fun. Going from the seemingly formless style of Dazed & Confused to the classic John Hughes take on being a teenager is makes for an interesting double feature. I once said that something to the effect of Hughes movies capturing what being a teenager feels like as opposed to what it actually is like and, because of that, I think pairing these two films is a smart move. 

The Big Chill

For the last movie I’ll be recommending to fans of Dazed and Confused, I’ve decided to go with 1983’s The Big Chill. The film is a comedy drama that was directed by Lawrence Kasden, writer of The Empire Strikes Back for any Star Wars guys that have stuck around after my American Graffiti comment, and was written by him in conjunction with Barbara Benedek. It tells the tale of a group of friends that went to the same college coming together for another friend’s funeral. Over the course of the film, they catch up and we learn about the ways their lives have gone since they were in college, and various secrets amongst them come out while they reflect on their relationships. On paper, it’s basically The Breakfast Club but everyone is an adult. However, therein lies why I think it makes for a good recommendation. It’s sorta like why I thought Ferris Bueller would make a good pairing, only instead of it providing a more Hollywood take on being a teenager, it’s because it’s a more formal spin on similar themes getting applied to adults. Not to mention, I think there’s something to be said about this being the only movie on today’s list that are about full-on adults, too. Not young adults like in Kicking and Screaming, proper, look at that glorious mustache adults that went to college in the 60s. 

Thematically, I think there’s something to be said about the way this movie tackles how these characters are holding onto the past. You really get a sense for how their deceased friend was the connecting fiber of their friend group and how, in his absence, they aren’t quite sure what they’re doing together. They clearly have a past that they can look at fondly, but there’s no telling if it’s enough for them to want to stay in each other’s lives.

It’s a great cap to Dazed and Confused because since it depicts characters that are similar enough to the Linklater movie’s cast 

Not to mention, it’s also a sharply written and well acted film that probably had an influence on Linklater and some of the other filmmakers I’ve mentioned here such as Noah Baumbach. In fact, I’m seemingly not the only to think this either as doing a tiny bit of research into this film led me to a review on mediocremovie.club where John Kissel said:

The Big Chill’s universal qualities mostly salvage what I wanted out of it, which was a Linklater-esque discussion of aging and values and what living through a shared momentous time meant for the characters 15 years on, if it meant anything at all.

And he’s totally right. The movie feels like the kind of conversation that Linklater may have had with his friends during a high school reunion or something and served as the partial inspiration for Dazed and Confused. As if any of that wasn’t enough for you, it also has Jeff Goldblum. So that’s cool.

The Big Chill really nails the hang-out aspect of Dazed and Confused in a way that I found enjoyable. It puts character work first and, if you’re into movies like that, I think you’ll get something out of it. It might lean a bit more on the American Graffiti side of things since they went to college in the sixties, the development of these characters from students to adults still makes for a compelling, Linklatery affair.

Closing

Anyway that brings us to the end of the video. I hope you enjoyed it and, if you did, that you consider checking any of these movies out and coming back to tell me what you thought of it. You’re also free to subscribe to the channel, share this with a friend, or subscribe to my patreon or get a channel membership if you wanna go the extra mile in showing your support. 

I also invite you to check out my two podcasts, Media Obscura and Glaring Admissions. They’re both dedicated to celebrating old and obscure, or iconic, seminal films respectively, and are available right here on this channel as full videos or on their shared RSS feed. 

So, yeah. bye!