Two quick things about Booksmart, put aside the nonsense plug saying from the people behind the unfunny movies Superbad or Sausage Party, this is actually good, clever and humorous. The other was how Olivia Wilde is a better director than actress. Admittedly, the only two pieces of her work I can quickly recall are TRON: Legacy and Cowboys & Aliens which made me call her Olivia Woode due to her stiffness on par with Natalie Portman in Star Wars. I do happily await Olivia’s next directing effort.
As for this movie, it has joined my catalog of well-done Coming-of-Age stories perfected by John Hughes. Plus I probably side with the heroines somewhat, namely in how America will continue to be run by dipshits.
Amy and Molly have been best friends since grade school and all throughout high school they busted their collective asses. They took AP classes, they studied, they earned awesome grades, etc. Their efforts were rewarded. Molly became class president and got into Yale while Amy landed a spot with Columbia. It all comes tumbling down when Molly discovers that her moron classmates were also accepted to elite universities: Yale, Stanford, Harvard (the class druggie’s fifth choice), Princeton, a six-digit job with Google (despite flunking seventh grade twice), etc. The trailer reveals this somewhat, what it left out…Molly and Amy attend a wealthy, privileged Los Angeles high school so I wasn’t surprised. With the recent money-for-placement scandal in which no über-rich Whiteys will be punished, Booksmart is a bit telling.
The film of course goes in a predictable direction, the ladies choose to make up four years of good times by going to the most popular asshole’s party. Plus Amy has the side quest of trying to get together with her crush, an adorkable tatted up, skate-rat girl named Ryan. Along the way they find out their principal moonlights as an Uber driver, their favorite teacher travels with her dress-up wardrobe in her car, they have to endure the Drama Club’s murder-mystery party, Gigi (the class druggie) shows up everywhere and people will never fail to disappoint or surprise.
What I really loved were the several breaks with reality Wilde took the story, I won’t spoil them since they’re some of the funniest bits. Those alone put it on par with my personal favorite, Weird Science. The language was realistic too. Unlike Superbad, profanity and soundbite ready ringtones or memes aren’t utilized to pad the dialog (McLovin was never funny). To me, Molly and Amy are real teenagers in any decade with some exception to Amy’s homosexuality; in previous eras it wouldn’t have existed, they’d both be brainy heterosexuals who didn’t know they were boy crazy until this one wild evening. Going forward in time, Amy’s character and tastes should be treated as, “I hope Ryan digs her too, I am rooting for her.”
Check it out. I’m already formulating a modern trilogy with Booksmart to frame Coming-of-Age in the (21st Century) Twenty-Teens:
- Eighth Grade
- Edge of Seventeen
- Booksmart
I’m a bit behind the eight ball for the Aughts, so send me your suggestions because I obviously being an elder Gen X’r, I have the Eighties locked down and it would be a marathon.
