About Alex.

We spend a lot of time living through something that we've already experienced. Maybe we'll learn something new that we didn't notice before. And we tell ourselves this is a good thing, because that's how people change. But, mostly we're lying. Because we're not looking so much as we're feeling, tasting, smelling. Connecting with a version of us we want to preserve. We go back to a moment because it was either the best or worst and important because of the very fact that it's unimportant.

The idea of "letting go" becomes an ignored mantra we tell ourselves when it starts to become impossible to discern a moment from this moment.

About Alex captures this struggle. A distress signal in the form of a suicide attempt brings a group of college friends together to ignore this instance and recall others. A twenty first century re-imagining of the 80s classic The Big Chill, the young cast is dotted with rising indie stars such as Aubrey Plaza and Jason Ritter. Max Greenfield, best known as Schmidt on New Girl, gives a surprisingly fresh performance as a different kind of irate Jew. Although the premise is far from novel, About Alex’s singularity lies in its spin on the overworked reunion trope. It’s not just a class reunion, it's a Life Progress Report. 
 While it's 80s counterpart's pop/rock soundtrack became a monster of its own, releasing multiple albums featuring the sounds of a fading generation, About Alex's soundtrack is an eclectic collection of the new millennium. In a memorable scene, the hodge-podge clan of late thirty-somethings struggle to find a generation defining record to play. After rejecting Arcade Fire as "too Canadian," they settle for the Generationals' indie sleeper hit "When They Fight, They Fight," sway to its upbeat tempo and get lost in a cloud of marijuana smoke. Lyrics like "And when it all comes crashing down/What can you do/To find what you're looking for?"makes the song an actual thirty-something has probably never heard of become the perfect reason why this song represents their generation.

There are a lot of people who dismiss this movie that dares to tag itself as "generation-defining" and point to "The Big Chill" as the real deal. What they fail to see is the beautiful irony in their criticism. If there is one theme that defines this millennium it's that nothing new is allowed to be relevant.  

This attitude reproduces the fundamental message of the film: sometimes we get lost in a moment, but fail to live in this one.