First-time director Noah Baumbach has probably seen every Hal Hartley movie known to mankind. He probably lives, breathes, and sleeps Hal Hartley. He probably offered to have Hal Hartley's baby. Every bit of dialogue in his film sounds like it could have come from a Hal Hartley movie.

The only thing difference is that Baumbach sets his film amidst the ramblings of four men, all recent college graduates who make quaint little jokes about the two most important subjects to recent male college graduates: masturbation and the future. Fortunately, for cinemaphiles (unfortunately for men) the future turns out to be more important.

Perhaps the one thing that is fairly accurate in this film is that the four male friends are immature, aimless, slightly pathetic people who don't understand women their own age. I may be pathetic, immature and wimpy, but do I really have to be reminded of it for ninety minutes?

And finally, is anyone else sick of this Generation X style of filmmaking and television where nothing really happens and people sit around and talk in depth about how nothing's really happening? I suspect Baumbach's film wrapped after he went out for lunch and couldn't find his way back to the set, so everyone got tired of waiting for him and left. Is some kind of linear story for at least one of the characters too much to ask?