Seth Rogen is also a millennial, as are the characters in Pineapple Express, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to The Greek, the Harold & Kumar movies, American Reunion, and The Five-Year Engagement. So this list is a tad padded.
And on the third hand, characters having trouble growing up are a staple of all generations (The Graduate, anyone?).
But on the fourth hand, almost all of these movies feature character who are married, and who do have good jobs. Few of them have anything to do with “making the transition to adulthood” and more to do with “adulthood blows sometimes.”
I’ve been thinking about that. James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel all starred in Freaks & Geeks (produced by Judd Apatow), a high school comedy that aired in 1999 and takes place in the early 80s. So that counts as Gen-X.
The cast of the American Pie is only a few years younger than me (43). Allison Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris (along with Jason Segal) also star in How I Met Your Mother, which is more or less a Millennial version of Friends. Except that Hannigan and NPH are also in their early 40s.
Russell Brand is 41. However he is playing an older character to Jonah Hill.
In Superbad, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and the McLovin kid are obviously Millennials. Bill Hader and Seth Rogan, however, are Gen-X aged “adult” police officers (who act dangerously irresponsibly).
Paul Rudd is 47.
Of course, The Graduate was made back in 1967.
So at best, I would say it’s a trend that started that has progressed over time and isn’t necessarily confined to one generation.
That’s sort of my point. In most of these films, the cure for “adulthood blows” is “let’s act like drunken high school seniors”. Which was basically the plot of “Sisters”.
Well the chance isn’t necessarily available to to them either. Settling down and starting families used to be a bit of a calming effect on young adults. But now many put off marriage and families, and some even lack the stable employment and lifestyle that would make them an attractive partner. So what’s that person going to do after work? Probably come home, take a rip off the bong and settle in with a few beers for a night of Call of Duty.
I think I’ve noticed your problem. Millennials start in 1982 (and most kids born in 80 or 81 obviously share more of a life experience with their Millennial cohorts than anyone else. So the cast of Freaks & Geeks (and all the other Apatow things they’re in) are Millennials.
The characters in How I Met Your Mother and the American Pie series also qualify as Millennials. The actors themselves are sometimes older, but they’re portraying Millennials. Hannigan actually did it three times, and she also played a Millennial on Buffy. Maybe she’s some kind of witch…
Yes, Brand and Rudd are definitely Gen-X, but that’s sort of my point. They’re in their 40s. They’re grown. They show up in movies playing fully-formed adults who then get into hijinks. This is less a “lack-of-growing-up” thing and more a “people like hijinks” thing.
As it was with Boomer movies in the 80s and Xer movies in the 90s and 2000s. This “trend” really got going with Will Ferrell and he’s one of the oldest Xers. If he was born a few years earlier, he would have been a Boomer. It’s something that always happens in movies, and as long as it remains popular, will always happen.
I feel like the Boomer movies in the 80s had a different vibe. I’m thinking of films like Smokey & the Bandit, Trading Places, Fletch, Caddy Shack and so on. These films had lots of “hijinks”. But I don’t recall a lot of films from that period where you had full grown adults going back to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Remember that Animal House (1978) the Delta house was supposed to be a bunch of screw-ups. In any college comedy since then, Delta house behavior is considered the minimum standard.
It’s not by accident. As already pointed out, more young people are going to college IRL. They are pushing out marriage and taking longer to start their careers or families. There is a documented trend where young people are tending to form “surrogate families” consisting of their roommates and close friends, similar to Friends and How I Met Your Mother.
I don’t think adjusting to adulthood is a new concept. There have certainly been plenty of films made about that before Gen-X. Nor do I think pining for one’s glory days is a new concept either. But I do think postponing adulthood is a real phenomenon that we see in Gen-X and now Millennials, and those themes have been reflected in film over the past 20 or so years.
