“Everybody Wants Some” is writer/director Richard Linklater’s observation of seven young men during the weekend before studies begin in 1980 at South Eastern University in Texas. The structured discipline and rubrics of school and its dear old golden-rule days are past. For strangers brought together in a rented house where the owner imposes only two rules – no alcohol, no women – the sudden blast of freedom is breathtaking.

In its early stage the film pays more attention to baseball than academic matters. Jake (Blake Jenner) has been assigned to a house with six other players all strangers to each other. Their individual and joint behaviours take up much of the film’s nearly two hours.

At one of the many parties where much liquor gets drunk and regurgitated, where young women fend off invitations to lock the bedroom door to avoid interruption, Jake and Beverly (Zoey Deutch) make a date for what will become a pleasant conversation that may endure or may not.

The weekend is countdown to Monday morning’s reality.

And that’s it in a nutshell, an agreeable, sometimes obsessively juvenile, time for discovery of freedom, responsibility, friendship. It’s watchable, even nostalgic for we who’ve survived walking a similar path.

At Palace Electric and Dendy