BACK CHAT

By RICHARD CORLISS

ONCE IT WAS THE UN-GENRE; now it is in danger of overpopulation. We speak of the postmodern comedy of manners, in which hyperarticulate twentysomethings talk--and talk and talk--about the imminent threat of becoming thirtynothings. They are the Sons of Seinfeld, and among the brightest of their number is Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming, the little fable of half a dozen or so college grads. It's an upmarket Clerks, a less fraught Jeffrey, Barcelona with a faster pulse--or maybe Friends on PBS. Grover (Josh Hamilton) doesn't want his girlfriend Jane (Olivia d'Abo) to go study in Prague--she'll "come back a bug." Max (Chris Eigeman), a guy so jaded that every new experience is deja vu, falls in with cheeky Kate (Cara Buono). Chet (Eric Stoltz) is a professional student, and Otis (the delightfully morose Carlos Jacott) apparently plans to make a career of losing. They all share an avocation: chatting. The young men, especially, are "media slaves," infomaniacs. Who would win, Freddy or Jason? Does BANKRUPT come up more often on Wheel of Fortune now?

Cool is something these folks wear like a dinner jacket; their offhand wit is so studied that their bull sessions seem like a final they crammed for. But the writer-director is canny enough to salt the stew with poignance, so that by the end these attitude machines have become human beings--more than the sum of their chiseled jokes. Baumbach is a find, of sorts: he has both comic sense and camera sense. Imagine Quentin Tarantino without the guns.