A high school comedy for the “you do you” era
Much like whodunnits and heist movies, titles involving the end of high school can’t help but call on a variety of well-worn, yet always welcome tropes. The high school movie genre hosts a large assortment of titles, each one belonging to a different generation. For many people, The Breakfast Club is the one which best captures the high school experience in both its honesty and quirkiness. What made that movie so great is that it took representatives from the different sides of the average American high school population and showed what made each individual who they were. While the newest addition to genre, the instantly-endearing comedy Booksmart, doesn’t negate the points made by movies such as The Breakfast Club, it takes things further by dispelling the myth that you think you know the people you spend four of the most important years of your life with.
In Olivia Wilde’s feature directing debut, Booksmart, graduating high school seniors/BFFs Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) have passed through the experience with flying colors and are on their way to promising futures thanks to four years of uber-studying and leaning on each other. However, an eye-opening confrontation with a group of popular kids leads Molly to the realization that she and Amy missed out on a crucial part of the high school experience that exists outside of homework and studying. Determined to complete their full education, that night the girls set out to locate the hottest end of high school party in town, leading to one hilarious adventure after another.
Booksmart is flat out hilarious. Both the movie’s comedy and dialogue add fuel to the overall hysteria by being so whip smart and rapidly paced that there’s hardly any time at all to stop for a breath in between laughs before the next joke hits. Everything is fair game for laughter here, from the school principal (Jason Sudeikis) pulling double duty as the girl’s “hip” Lyft driver to a lesson on the dangers of climbing into a stranger’s car, which culminates in a sensational last-minute payoff. The script gives both its young leads true comedy gold in the lines they each are asked to deliver, making conversations about everything from drug usage to masturbation more sidesplitting than they have any right to be. Wilde also skillfully executes a number of sequences brimming over with comic potency and creativity that never overstay their welcome or break up the gleeful momentum carrying Booksmart along. One such element is the repeated appearance of Gigi (Billie Lourd), a somewhat loopy influencer-like classmate who seems to exist on her own planet, yet bewilderingly turns up at virtually every one of the girls’ stops throughout the night. But the film’s most brilliant sequence remains the extended scene in which Amy and Molly have taken drugs for the first time, turning them into literal Barbie dolls in their eyes. Watching the two characters explore their hallucinogenic state as a pair of plastic dolls, while also making some slight social commentary, is so wonderfully insane it will surely go down in pop culture history.
The comedy alone would be worth turning up for Booksmart; however, the film earns immense credibility through the mission it aims to fulfill. At the heart of the laughter is a story of two girls finding themselves after suddenly discovering they still have some learning to do. Molly and Amy have pegged themselves as the studious ones in their school, claiming their place as such. But their clinging to such roles has stifled them socially in ways which extend beyond popularity. When Molly discovers that the people she spent four years judging for partying and going out have also prospered academically based on their own merit, she’s flabbergasted. It’s here where Molly and Amy discover that it’s fear as well as ambition which have made them adopt the roles they’ve taken on in the high school, believing that they fit into the world of straight academia more than anywhere else. Booksmart is such an explosive gem of a film, that to brand it a “lesson movie” would almost feel like a swipe. Yet the movie does impart the truth to its main characters that no one (themselves included) is truly a stereotype nor can be completely dismissed. There’s something of a universality to the fact that Molly and Amy have written everyone off, most of all themselves, as people belonging to one social world or another. When the pair discover the world outside the one they have shielded themselves in, they inevitably find more of themselves than they realized, cementing the fact that being booksmart isn’t enough.
It’s impossible to sing the full praises of Feldstein in the main role. After stealing all her scenes two years ago in Lady Bird, the young actress couldn’t have asked for a better vehicle for her talents. The fire and hilarity she injects into Molly is totally the movie’s engine, proving so vital to the film’s life that it’s impossible to think of anyone better to bring Molly to life in just this way. Even if she has the lesser role in terms of flash, Dever nonetheless manages a soulfulness as Amy that does wonders for Booksmart’s poignant side. A scene featuring Amy underwater in a swimming pool populated by her classmates is one of the most touching and inspiring moments in the film thanks to the beauty Dever gives her character as she undergoes the most subtle, yet meaningful of transformations. The adults, including Sudeikis, Lisa Kudrow, and Will Forte (as Amy’s parents) turn in the kind of laughs you would expect from such established comedy pros without taking the focus away from the movie’s young stars. The same can’t be said for Lourd, who is such a comic force of nature as the unpredictable Gigi, as she manages to outshine virtually anyone who finds themselves in the same frame as her with excellent timing, delivery, and an unflappable willingness to play.
I’ve always admired Wilde as an actress. Besides being a striking beauty, Wilde has always managed to portray women of strength in such a unique way that her natural intelligence couldn’t help but come across through every character she’s played. It’s no wonder then that Booksmart feels nothing like a novice director’s debut. Everything from the timing, to the pacing, to the instinctual knowledge of when to favor a moment of honesty over a laugh, bears the mark of a natural filmmaker. Booksmart may be a film for the “you do you” generation, but Wilde goes beyond such a notion to reach the timeless truth of the high school experience as well as the complex and undefinable journey of finding out the kind of individual each person is meant to be.