Film Review - Booksmart (15)

We are not one-dimensional. We are smart and fun.

Booksmart comes a mere twelve years after Superbad, the film with which it will be most regularly compared, and yet these two movies seem a whole generation apart. There's much, admittedly, that links actor Olivia Wilde's directorial debut with classic US high-school comedies (add Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Dazed and Confused to the list). The more things change, after all, the more they stay the same. But with nerdily progressive best-friends Any and Molly taking centre-stage, Booksmart is very 2019 indeed.

 

The pair have been thick as thieves for years, sharp wit and academic endeavour their preferred means of bonding. These school careers have been all Library and no socialising beyond the witty/dirty sparring they do with each other. One day prior to Graduation, as their Los Angeles alma mater devolves into 'school's out forever' chaos, Molly makes a devastating discovery. Her and Amy's fellow-students, apparent slackers included, have achieved college places just as good as theirs while having actual fun along the way. The girls' mission becomes clear. Find the most essential pre-Graduation party going, and cram four years of missed opportunities into one crazy night.

Booksmart has the outrageous and raunchy sensibility you might expect from its well-worn genre, and yet from its opening moments there's a vibrancy and freshness to it also. The all-female writing team are close enough to modern teenage life to get its rhythms and concerns, yet sufficiently removed to observe it with wry affection. As with the best school-based comedies, this is as much for those looking back, as for the ones still experiencing. With its 'smart and fun' central duo it's proudly feminist, yet the main agenda here is to be funny (solid if not 100% hit rate) and deep-down real (where the film scores Superhigh).

The realest aspect of the movie is without doubt Amy and Molly - a relationship that feels lived-in the way few big-screen partnerships achieve. There's a natural quality to their rapport, suggesting two friends utterly in their comfort-zone together. Kaitlyn Dever as Amy, the quieter, defensively ironic one, has proved her dramatic credentials in Detroit and Beautiful Boy. Beanie Feldstein as driving-force Molly, was a memorably funny sidekick to Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird. Together they're a comic tour de force that can deliver full-blooded emotional punch in key scenes. The chemistry between them - witty, hilarious and at least once heartbreaking - should rocket both to stardom. 

There's a joy in their fellow-students too, each sufficiently fleshed out to transcend caricature, with several proving significantly different from first appearances. This movie refuses to label and judge, even if its teen characters sometimes do so instinctively. The result is that the socially inept rich kid, the dumb jock, the party-in-the-back-seat girl, all get to reveal actual layers, and to be funny and touching in the process. As for the drama society queens, they're fearlessly outlandish to a point that transcends all ridicule.

 

Respect goes to director Wilde for injecting the film with as much youthful energy and libido as any of its testosterone-fuelled predecessors. As a director she's got a great eye for the comic, enhancing all the youthful performances (aside from a few moments when the propulsive soundtrack becomes intrusive instead). There's a building sense of the protagonists' mentally altering states as the evening progresses, along with flashes of the surreal, but Wilde also knows when to quieten things down and let pathos sink in. If Booksmart heralds a whole new career path for the longtime jobbing actress, that's a prospect to relish.

There's much about Booksmart that's familiar, but it'll be remembered - and it'll surely achieve beloved status in the high school comedy canon - for everything it does that's new. It's relatively easy to create a sense of teen anarchy and to gross out your audience, much less so to capture a whole new zeitgeist or to create empathy for the characters along the way. Wilde and co do both of the latter in spades. This rites of passage adventure goes some unexpected places, truly earning its place in the Movies of '19 Yearbook.

Gut Reaction: Not quite so much gut-laughter as during Superbad, but something more subtle. A persistent smile, while rooting for these proactively geeky characters.

Memorable Moment: One of our duo runs an emotional underwater gauntlet.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Sometimes raw, frequently funny and always clever, Booksmart loves its characters, Amy and Molly most of all. It'll make you love them too.