A hilarious, deeply relaxed comedy about male bonding, Richard Linklater’s baseball-minded latest ranks right up there with his masterpieces.

Can there be any doubt by now that Richard Linklater is America’s most relaxed and quietly ambitious filmmaker? After all but reinventing the coming-of-age movie with his 12-years-in-the-making Boyhood—and building an even more impressive 27-year trilogy with his heartbreaking “Before” movies—the director now serves up a deceptively simple comedy. Everybody Wants Some!! is about nothing more (or less) than the weekend shenanigans that transpire on a Texas college campus in August 1980. The school’s rowdy baseball team returns, welcoming freshman pitcher Jake (Blake Jenner, a clear-eyed find) with the kind of genial hazing—“fuck-with-ery,” the newbie calls it—that brings to mind Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993). Bongs will be lit. Pink Floyd will be discussed.
Metacritic