A Time Capsule of 1980 Teenage Desire

“Everybody Wants Some!!”—director Richard Linklater’s long-gestating follow-up to his 1993 coming-of-age film “Dazed and Confused”—is yet another cinematic time capsule pulsing with classic pop and rock music.

Set in 1980, the new film, which premiered to rave reviews at this month’s South by Southwest festival, is like “Dazed and Confused” in another key way: Its cast is full of young acting talent on the verge of breaking out. At the forefront are Blake Jenner, a 23-year-old former star of “Glee,” and Glen Powell, 27, from the comedy-horror series “Scream Queens.”

Mr. Jenner plays the protagonist, Jake, an East Texas baseball player loosely based on Mr. Linklater, embarking on his first year of college. With his toned, 6-foot-2 frame, Mr. Jenner’s character mixes physical confidence with an easygoing demeanor unusual for a freshman. “Jake’s just savvy enough about how to fit in, how to get along,” says Mr. Linklater, 55, who is fresh off three Oscar nominations for his 2014 film, “Boyhood.”

Amid a party-packed atmosphere, Jake hits it off right away with a team veteran named Finn, who’s played by Mr. Powell. Finn acts as a mentor to Jake. The bond between the characters has a lot to do with Messrs. Jenner and Powell already having known each other before the film started production, the actors and director say. After several discussions and callbacks during the audition process, Mr. Linklater set up what’s called a chemistry read for both actors. “We already had the chemistry,” Mr. Powell says. “It was a rigged job.”

ENLARGE

From left, director Richard Linklater and actor Juston Street in ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ Photo: Paramount Pictures

“Everybody Wants Some!!” will need to count on some of its fresh faces to become stars if it’s going to achieve the same lasting appeal as “Dazed and Confused,” a free-flowing portrait of the anxiety and excitement of high school set in 1976. The older film turned out to be a trove of future stars and familiar faces in movies and TV.

Milla Jovovich, who went on to headline the “Resident Evil” franchise, played the perpetually stoned Michelle. Ben Affleck, cinema’s current Batman, portrayed the bully O’Bannion, who hazes incoming freshmen with sadistic glee.

(For his part, Mr. Affleck says he feels the role probably hurt his career at first. “I was the guy everyone was happy to leave behind, the [one] who threw them into lockers and chased them all over,” he says.)

The biggest breakout performance in “Dazed and Confused,” however, came from Matthew McConaughey, who says the movie helped him secure an agent and more auditions. “My work in ‘Dazed’ was my resume,” Mr. McConaughey says in an email.

His character, Wooderson, has been out of high school a few years, but he still parties with the younger crowd and offers them pearls of stoned, swaggering wisdom. The character is ingrained in pop culture thanks to Mr. McConaughey’s laid-back delivery on lines such as “All right, all right, all right” and “You just gotta keep livin’ man, L-I-V-I-N.”

Mr. Powell has a chance to break through with his own charismatic, elder-statesman style in “Everybody Wants Some!!” His character, Finn, has all the best pickup lines and much of the movie’s funniest dialogue. But he also smokes a pipe, conducts himself with a shred more maturity than his teammates and reads Jack Kerouac.

“He’s cool, he’s self-righteous,” Mr. Powell says, “but not annoying about it.”

The retro appeal of “Everybody Wants Some!!”—set for a limited release March 30 before opening wide April 15—is a given for people who came of age in the early 1980s. The Carter era was about to fade into the Reagan decade, and Blondie and the Knack, both featured on the soundtrack, still ruled the radio. The movie shares its name with a song from Van Halen’s third album, which was released in 1980.

Mr. Linklater was very exacting about certain period details, including handshakes, Mr. Jenner says. (Twenty-first century greetings such as fist bumps and bro hugs were strictly verboten.) Then there’s all that shaggy hair.

“It’s going to be nostalgic for dudes like my dad,” Mr. Jenner says, adding that his father once had a haircut similar to his character’s.

Whether “Everybody Wants Some!!” can resonate with the high school and college students of today is another matter. “Dazed and Confused” was practically dumped into a limited number of theaters for a few weeks in fall of 1993, grossing a shade under $8 million. It then became a hot video rental and a fixture of midnight-movie showings usually reserved for cult classics such as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

“People would sneak joints into the theaters, or beers,” Mr. Linklater says. “People felt like they owned it.”

Part of the “Dazed and Confused” appeal comes from the fact that the youth of the 1990s, who grew up with the movie, had a lot in common with people who went through high school in the 1970s—at least compared with today’s teenagers and 20-somethings. Kids in 1993 still called each other on land lines, and the closest things to social media were graffiti on desks and passing notes in class.

Mr. Jenner, however, thinks millennial audiences, accustomed to Snapchat and other forms of instant communication, will find much to love in “Everybody Wants Some!!”—even if it looks and sounds like ancient history.

“Just being young,” he says, “it never changes.”

Write to Michael Calia at [email protected]