your teenage years, and a few incidents, days, dates, etc., spring immediately to mind. Most of what comes flooding back probably are the sensations that colored that time of your life — the feelings you had while pissing away whole afternoons with friends, not knowing what late nights and early mornings might bring your way, going on long road trips to nowhere.
Here’s where things start to get complicated: Drawing from their our self-admittedly delinquent formative years, the Ross brothers began to come up with possible “episodes” that would happen during the movie’s “story.” There was a script, but no real dialogue. They auditioned actual teenagers from Wiley to play loose versions of themselves; a montage of their high school IDs doubles as a cast roll call.
So, for that matter, are the moods behind the bookends of this lyrical ode to hitting the road with your best buds and nothing but the folly of youth and a few bucks in your pocket. Before we’ve even met the five friends who’ll go west, we see them jumping off a rocky ledge into a lake — the idea of excitedly careening into the unknown, suspended in limbo before splashing into the water.