Everybody Wants Some

College guys engaging in weed-smoking sessions, locker-room pranks, and house parties with backyard mud wrestling have been staples of easily dismissed slapstick comedies for years.

However, Everybody Wants Some is not a slapstick comedy, and it’s not easily dismissed. The latest film from director Richard Linklater (Boyhood) instead weaves those broad and formulaic elements into a celebration of nostalgia that resonates with authenticity.

It’s been called a spiritual sequel of sorts to Linklater’s seminal 1993 coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused, and such a comparison makes chronological sense. While that film was about the adventures of rambunctious high school students on the first weekend of summer vacation in 1976, this one is set four years later, and focuses on the final weekend of summer before college classes start in the fall — with a new batch of characters, of course.

Specifically, the film is centered on the eccentric members of a baseball team at a fictional school in Texas, preparing for the season with some ritualistic hazing, practical jokes, and testosterone-fueled debauchery. Manhood is tested and lines are drawn between seniors and freshmen. Most of them find just enough charm to compromise for their reckless imprudence, including an arrogant outfielder (Tyler Hoechlin), a philosophical troublemaker (Glen Powell), and a fresh-faced pitcher (Blake Jenner) who tries to romance a co-ed (Zoey Deutch) without looking uncool in front of his teammates.

Linklater knows his territory, of course. He played baseball briefly in the early 1980s at Sam Houston State, and based some of the characters and scenarios on anecdotes from actual teammates.

Although it could have been a little tighter in its execution, the film is sharply written and consistently amusing, and the ensemble cast of largely unheralded actors (just like Dazed and Confused, during its time) captures a universal sense of camaraderie that might prompt sheepish reflection from middle-aged viewers on their own mischievous antics.

Indeed, here’s an almost immersive quality to the depiction of the period, from the cringe-worthy fashions to the cool cars to the abundant jams on the soundtrack. Yet there’s surprising depth beneath the shallow surface.

Despite Linklater’s well-known affinity for baseball, the film features only one sequence on the field, and that’s a practice. Everybody Wants Some isn’t a sports movie, but it’s a winner.

Rated R, 116 minutes.