How come Gen-X has a hard time growing up in film?

Just for fun, I put together a list of films all sharing themes of Generation X (people born from around the mid 60s to early 80s) unable or unwilling to make the transition to adulthood.

For the most part, I’ve excluded Gen-X films from the 90s (Singles, Reality Bites, etc), or high school / college (American Pie, Van Wilder) comedies since I feel those tend to deal with age appropriate issues of transitioning into adulthood (or Adam Sandler films where the character is probably mentally ill). Old School is the starting point because that’s the earliest example I can think of where you have full-grown, fully functioning adults regressing to a high school or college mentality of excessive sex, drugs and alcohol.
Old School (2002)
40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
Wedding Crashers (2005)
You, Me and Dupree (2006)
The Break Up (2006)
Failure to Launch (2006)
Superbad (2007) - The cops played by Seth Rogan and Bill Hader
Knocked Up (2007)
Role Models (2008)
Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Step Brothers (2008)
Pineapple Express (2008)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
What Happens in Vegas (2008)
Couples Retreat (2009)
I Love You, Man (2009)
Get Him to The Greek (2010)
The Switch (2010) - Ryan Reynolds’s character
Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)
Our Idiot Brother (2011)
American Reunion (2012)
The Five-Year Engagement (2012)
This Is 40 (2012)
The Internship (2013)
The World’s End (2013)
Delivery Man (2013)
This Is the End (2013)
Bad Words (2013)
This is Where I Leave You (2014)
Unfinished Business (2015)
Sisters (2015)
The Night Before (2015)
Trainwreck (2015)
That’s a lot of films about grown-ass people in their 30s and 40s who can’t seem to stop acting like they are in high school.

Reviewing your list, maybe it’s just Seth Rogan who is having a hard time of it :smiley:

Or Judd Apatow.

I’d argue against some of these movies, but I would say it’s about a rejection of the Baby Boomer adult “ideal” and the notion that a real adult is someone with an office job, a house, a wife, and 2.5 kids.

Pushing earlier that 2002, Fight Club (which Old School started a loose parody of) addresses it:

True, he is involved in a lot of these films. Although I would argue that he would not be so successful if those themes didn’t strike a chord with so many people.

If you look up statistics, Gen-Xers are much more likely to have graduated from college and then returned home.

In addition, it seems to me that they are also the first generation that retained the desirability/acceptability of playing games other than sports and gambling. For example, a modern Gen-X dad is pretty likely to play X-Box with his 12-year old son. It’s extremely unlikely that his father did the same thing with him and not just for technology reasons. His dad probably insisted on “acceptable” manly activities like sports and not “childish” games.

So there’s probably a kernel of truth in there that resonates with people.

However, I also wouldn’t underplay Hollywood’s propensity to repeat successful film formulas. In about the same time frame, we see a major resurgence of zombies in all forms. Is there some deep psychological reason that Gen-Xers like zombies? I’m guessing not. Sometimes it’s just a fad.

I’d also address the OP’s point as “What defines adulthood?” For example, in “This Is The End,” they’re all playing extremely successful actors. Or in “I Love You, Man” Sydney is a well off investment banker. Are they not adults because they don’t have a family and a 9-5 job?

Baby Boomer movie executives looking at a younger generation either enviously or condescendingly.

You need to end that with ‘than the specific generation that grew up in the golden age where America’s economy was stronger than everyone else’s in the world’. The concept of ‘finish high school, get a factory job or go to college then get a job, and them buy a house and move your new family in’ was very much invented by Boomers, in older times multigenerational households were actually quite common.

But for some reason Boomers feel like they get to invent their own standard ‘life plan’, but their kids don’t. If you don’t somehow do what they did in an economy where a factory job pays much less in real dollars if you can even find one, a college education costs twelve times as much for you (and doesn’t always lead to a good job), while eating food that costs two and a half times as much, and using medical care that costs six times as much, you’re probably just lazy and unmotivated.

Yeah, more of the same Boomer attitude ‘the stuff I do is Proper Manly Pursuits because I said so, the stuff you do is Kid’s Stuff because I’ve abitrarily declared it so. But you’re not allowed to just declare your hobbies Proper Many Pursuits, even though it’s more adult to make your own decisions than do what your parents tell you, because I said so’.

The Before Sunrise trilogy is a beautiful portrayal of how two Gen-Xers change over the course of 18 years. No frat parties or silly shenanigans.

I think television is more realistic in portraying Gen Xers coming to terms with adulthood, particularly shows like Parenthood, Modern Family, etc.

I’ve only seen about half of these 'cause I don’t get enough allowance.

One of my father’s biggest pieces of advice for me was “don’t waste all your time on chess and bridge like I did.”

As a Gen-Xer, I have a feeling it’s because the generations before us had no real concept that there was anything other than go to school, possibly join the military for a hitch, get a job, get married, have kids, and do traditional gender-role related stuff. I mean, my father, a fairly enlightened kind of guy in that regard, is still closer to my grandfather than he is to me in that respect.

So there’s always been a lot of top-down pressure on Gen-Xers to follow the traditional life path, and a lot of questioning and reluctance for Gen-Xers to actually do so. Quite a few choose not to get married, or not to have kids, etc… and even more seem to defiantly retain a certain youthful aspect to the things they enjoy, even if they DO have the job, marriage and kids. I mean, how many boomers watch cartoons, or play video games, or read comic books in adulthood, versus Gen-Xers?

I think the movies are a reflection of that- “Old School” is a great example of Gen-Xers saying “fuck it” to the traditional way of doing things, and doing something new. Even there, only Will Ferrell’s character was a man-child type; Luke Wilson’s and Vince Vaughn’s were relatively responsible, even if they didn’t want to follow the traditional path to a T.

True, but I think the main point is they were pining for this idealized notion of college debauchery from their youth. It’s like the opening monologue from The World’s End. Gary King (Pegg) is recanting their “Golden Mile” pub crawl from their youth. He ends the story saying “life would never get better than that”. Next shot, he’s a 40 year old in an AA meeting in the present and says “…and it never did”.

Because the movie going audience isn’t interested in serious drama about the actual issues involved and any attempt is not going to make enough money to be greenlighted. Better from a financial standpoint to put the money into an adventure films.

The audience still likes raunchy comedies, so they’re still made.

People live longer these days. So why shouldn’t we do things we enjoyed when we were young longer too?

Are you sure that we aren’t just continuing a trend baby boomers started?

Let’s think of some celebrity Boomers: Spielberg, who started his career doing children movies, and still does the occasional BFG. Lucas, who made a famous series of movies based on his childhood love for Flash Gordon. Clinton, the most immature of all Presidents. Michael Jackson, who was a notorious Peter Pan–

Compare all the Boomers with the previous generation, the ones who started wearing a suit at 17 and never took it out. The Boomers created teen culture and when they grew up, instead of abandoning it, transformed it into Adult Oriented Rock and 80’s action flicks.

So, really, it makes sense that gen-x’ers would follow the path of immaturity in the west, just like Millenials. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

And that encapsulates the whole problem. Gen-X was the first generation in North America who did not expect to do better than their parents did. A lot of us graduated into a shitty job market, with expectations of un- and under-employment being the major theme of our careers. Even those who did better than average usually did it via things like contract work, which replaced steady paychecks with a boom-and-bust cycle of contract work spaced out by weeks or months of no work.

Some of us got better (I did, for one), but we haven’t forgotten what that was like. At a certain point, you just say, “Well, the plan that society had for me has fucked up, so fuck it, I might as well have fun with what I can.” So, I’m unemployed this month? Movie Matinees every day! Why not? It’s not like I have a schedule I have to keep.

Except the portrayal of Gen-X is that they don’t really want to “do better than their parents did”. At least not in the traditional sense. It’s almost like the opposite problem. Their childhood and adolescence was too good. Adulthood with it’s crappy soul crushing jobs and tedious family life with a nagging wife would never match up to hanging around with your best bros, playing videogames, partying and doing drugs all day.

No doubt. My baby boomer parents thought video games were a waste of time and money, and even looked on home computers as “unnecessary toys”. For that matter, they were fine with me playing piano, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, and acoustic guitar, but an electric guitar was a frivolous “toy” only useful for that childish rock & roll music (despite growing up with R&R, my dad stopped listening to it in the early 1960s and switched to country & western almost exclusively, while my mom preferred classical and folk music).

To my mom’s credit, her second husband, whom she married at age 49, turned her on to computers, and now at 72 she’s quite fluent in their use, switching comfortably between her laptop, her iPhone, and her iPad. And while she still doesn’t enjoy rock music, she’s learned to at least appreciate the talent of some of its players.