Booksmart Graduates With Straight A's

I think I’ve mentioned before how much high school sucks. But one good thing it has produced is a subgenre of coming-of-age movies that use that period in adolescence as a backdrop or source of relevant, sometimes quite relatable, stories. And they come in a wild variety of forms, approaching such subject matter in new and compelling ways. Booksmart, the terrific new teen comedy from first-time director Olivia Wilde, is by design not terribly novel. Rather it feels like a response to the kind of high school movie that still dominates the common perception of that genre. It may be generally accepted now that many of the most famous teen comedies of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s are terribly misogynist, homophobic, or racist, and carry with them bad messages and harmful subject matter (even some John Hughes movies are borderline unwatchable). But they’re still, at least as far as the mainstream pop culture is concerned, the model. Booksmart however flips the tables, maintaining a broad, modestly raunchy sensibility, but with a smarter sense of humour and genuinely meaningful things to say.

Class president Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and her best friend Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), having spent most of high school studying relentlessly and avoiding the typical teen vices of parties, sex, and drugs, are looking forward to promising futures of Ivy League schools, studying abroad, and lucrative careers. But the day before graduation they discover that most of the classmates they presumed they were academically surpassing not only got good grades but have just as promising prospects. Feeling like they’ve wasted high school, Molly and a reluctant Amy determine to go to the big end-of-year house party to rectify what they’ve missed, getting sidetracked by a series of bizarre shenanigans along the way.

Right from the very premise, this movie is subversive, stomping on the common cliché of cemented stereotype cliques and the notion that students can’t have both a social life and academic success; it enforces that a persons’ outward character and behaviour may not represent their intelligence and work ethic, forcing its audience to question their own prejudices alongside Molly. At the same time, what she goes through is heavily relatable to that downtrodden feeling of working so hard and making sacrifices for something that seemingly came without effort to so many peers. It’s devastating to be brought down like that; her frustration is deeply understandable, giving her and Amy’s mission much more weight than if they were merely trying to get laid.

This is an especially important foundation given the mad turns their adventure takes. Booksmart is consistently funny, almost farcical at times; and what it may lack in the originality of its trajectory (obviously it needs a drug trip sequence and is structured to the Rule of Three), it makes up for in the strength of individual jokes, a solid script by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, and Kate Silberman that root the girls and their personalities in a thoroughly modern context, and excellent star-making performances from the leads. Feldstein, who was an unsung gem of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, is brash, impulsive, slightly bullying in nature, but never too unlikeable, playing this flawed and self-righteous teenager with remarkable sympathy. And Dever brings swaths of vulnerability and anxiety to the shy yet strong-hearted Amy. There’s an amazing karaoke scene near the end of the second act that’s a nexus point which Dever imbues with stunning soul and passion. As a queer character too, she also embodies terrifically that tenuous uncertainty, particularly with regards to whether her crush is even gay, let alone attracted to her in return. Of the other kids (though all of them are good), the stand-outs are Molly Gordon as a slut-shamed soon to be Ivy-Leaguer, Skyler Gisondo as the rich kid who starts off annoying to become empathetic later on, and Billie Lourd as an eccentric who keeps showing up nonsensically throughout the night. Noteworthy in the adult cast are Jason Sudeikis, Jessica Williams, and a scene-stealing Mike O’Brien.

What’s most surprising though is how much heart this film ultimately has. Beneath the insane antics and deviations, this is a movie about teen female friendship. Molly and Amy have an immensely natural, likeable relationship with their own code of loyalty, routines, and various in-references, often based around inspirational women like Malala Yousafzai and Michelle Obama. There’s tension between them of course that you know will come to a boiling point, but despite that there’s so much warmth, and the chemistry between Feldstein and Dever is marvellous. While their plan is to catch up on the fun they missed, and perhaps make some headway with each of their crushes -both of which you kind of want for them, the movie isn’t really interested in that, which is obvious in how it avoids giving them what they want. Instead it frames the friendship being the real achievement of their high school years.

It’s easy to merely label Booksmart a female Superbad, given the notable parallels between the two movies, but it does a disservice to how much more inventive and fresh Booksmart is. Olivia Wilde directed remarkably, demonstrating a keen eye for visual comedy, and the movie has a thoughtfulness and lasting power that puts me in mind of The Edge of Seventeen -probably the best high school movie of this generation. It relishes in being both absolutely fun and sweet, with important points to drive home, as it buries the ignoble hatchet on high school comedies of generations past.

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