To understand why I’m writing this at all – a review of a little seen movie that was released two years ago – you have to understand how important Dazed and Confused is to me and my friends.

Watching Dazed and Confused was a rite of passage in high school. It came out in 1994 and it immediately got our attention because it featured drug use in a way that it hadn’t been before. It accurately (so I’m told) showed high school kids drinking beer and smoking pot recreationally and not as step one on a dangerous, disastrous path of addiction. This realistic portrayal as well as the humor surrounding it made it a classic for high school kids before they even watched it.

Ultimately it was just a really funny ensemble comedy. It featured the eminently quotable stoner character Slater. It also featured one of Matthew McConaughey’s earliest roles where he played Wooderson, a guy who can’t let high school – or, far creepier, high school girls – go. Ben Affleck was in it. Parker Posey was in it. Anthony Rapp was in it. Adam Goldberg, Marisa Ribisi, Joey Lauren Adams (and only if you’re really looking for her – Renee Zellweger).

It was a high school movie that wasn’t tethered to losing one’s virginity on prom. There were jocks and nerds and freshman and popular girls but the cliques were far more fluid than they had been in any other movie.

It was also philosophical, mostly in the musings of Mike, Tony, and Cynthia driving around trying to find something to do (arguably the most accurate portrayal of high school ever committed to celluloid).

Not a lot happens and most of the conflicts are left unresolved. The only semblance of a plot in a plotless movie is the decision of the main character Randall “Pink” Floyd to sign or not to sign a pledge to not do drugs or drink during the upcoming football season. (Even when he makes his decision, you get the feeling he might ultimately change his mind.)

Dazed endures because there’s a lot more going on in there than just pot jokes. It’s not necessarily about choosing your life’s path but beginning to see what that choice might entail. What compromises are you willing to make?

The film ends with a shot of an open road ahead.

When director Richard Linklater said he was coming out with a spiritual sequel to Dazed, I was psyched. It was going to be called Everybody Wants Some and be about college.

I didn’t rush out to see it and it actually took me a few years to get around to it.

It’s about an incoming freshman pitcher on the baseball team named Jake in the few weeks leading up to the first day of class.

I love Richard Linklater movies. I loved Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. I loved Boyhood and I even loved Suburbia and Waking Life (half of the audience of ten people that I saw it with walked out). And I don’t know, maybe I need to re-watch Everybody Wants Some but there seemed to be something missing.

Here’s the problem: it’s just the jocks. Dazed showed you the jocks, the smart kids, the burnouts, the freshman, the cool girls, everyone. In Everybody Wants Some, it’s mostly jocks being jocks in a house. There’s some cross pollination: Jake runs into a high school friend who lives in a house with other punk kids. But that was basically the only time you see non baseball players.

There were some interesting conflicts set up between the pitchers and the seniors on the team and the new guys but they didn’t pay off at all. And I was prepared for an underwhelming conclusion to some conflicts but they felt less open ended than dropped.

Wyatt Russell has an interesting turn in this movie and the relationship between Jake and Beverly is very sweet.

But where Dazed ends on a note of possibility, Everybody ends with Jake putting his head down to sleep through his first college class. Those scenes speak volumes about the difference between these two movies.