"The Get Together" a slight but diverting Linklater-ish hang

The Get Together (2021)

The One-Night Party Movie is a longtime staple, and any new entry resembling “Dazed and Confused,” “Can’t Hardly Wait,” or even 2012’s underseen “10 Years” is more than welcome to join. If you’re going to borrow, you might as well borrow from the best. In particular, there is a lot of Richard Linklater in “The Get Together,” a decidedly slight but clear-eyed and agreeable slice-of-life that floats freely around one house party. Texas-based writer-director Will Bakke and co-writer Michael B. Allen clearly have an affection for “Dazed and Confused” and the forethought that everything happening this one night—adulting, unrequited love, and going home again—might be inconsequential by morning. It's Linklater-lite, but Bakke gets it.

Going to the same party wasn’t the plan for most of these twentysomethings. Recently graduated college friends August (Courtney Parchman) and McCall (Luxy Banner) live together in Austin. August has been looking for employment for almost a year with no luck, while McCall has a marketing job and, for a night out with other friends, says she’s going out for a “work thing” even after primping and putting on a yellow dress on a Friday night. When August decides to make some money with Uber, she ends up driving a nice guy named Caleb (Alejandro Rose-Garcia) to a house party; naturally, he leaves his phone on the passenger’s seat, and when August enters the party, she finds McCall having a great time, not at work. As she gets to talking to some of McCall’s new friends, August realizes her best friend hasn’t been totally honest with her.

Around the same time, New York couple Damien (Jacob Artist) and Betsy (Johanna Braddy) are back in Austin for the weekend and run into an acquaintance at a restaurant. Damien gets anxious, as he was planning on proposing at Betsy’s parents’ house, but they get invited to that same house party and Betsy immediately jumps at the chance. After a convoluted series of hijinks that end up with Damien in the pool (and then in the pool once more after finding some goggles), he loses the engagement ring and begins his frantic search, while Betsy might still have unfinished business with Caleb, a directionless musician. 

The cast—all of them pretty fresh-faced aside from a few familiar TV faces—is keyed into a naturalistic performance style. Courtney Parchman, who broke out as a social-media blogger, has a natural energy about her as August. She can be awkward and clingy and a total bull in a china shop, but August comes across as likable and innocent anyway with a scintilla of self-awareness. In the margins, Ellar Coltrane (the star of Linklater’s own “Boyhood”) has a couple of scenes as a tattoo-faced partier, credited solely as “Face Tattoo,” hanging out in a pick-up truck, and one wonders if there's a backstory there that never comes. In an extraneous but amusing detail, it’s mentioned that Damien went to McKinley High, which happens to be the setting for “Glee” of which Jacob Artist was a co-star, and if we want to continue with the cool coincidences, “Glee” season co-star Blake Jenner starred in Linklater’s similar “Everybody Wants Some!!” 

There is a relatability to how one can struggle to find their footing when life is just starting, and there is also a predictability to how all of these characters find their way by the end of the night. Running seven minutes over an hour sans credits, “The Get Together” is a diverting hang, as if the viewer is a fly on the wall. It only scratches the surface of its characters in a very short period of time, but the fact that one is starved for more after the party ends is a compliment.

Grade: B -

Vertical is releasing “The Get Together” (74 min.) on VOD on May 14, 2021.