Booksmart - Review

Booksmart

Kaitlyn Dever (Short Term 12) and Beanie Feldstein (Lady Bird) are “besties” who are in the last 24 hours of High School to more promising academic destinations from Ivy League schools to adventures abroad. They deserve it, after all they sacrificed a lot to become academic superstars by not going to tons of weekend parties and avoided socializing after school with other students for the exclusive propose of achieving their dreams of a promising career based on their intellectual achievements.

So the story’s picks up on the eve before graduation by following “Amy’ (Dever) and “Molly” (Feldstein) characters. Shockingly when they get invited to a big party the pair suddenly realize that they should have worked less and played more. Determined never to fall short in the eyes of their peers anymore, the 2 girls set out on a nighttime mission to cram four years of crazy fun into one night.

REVIEW: For me, “Booksmart’ tries to capture the nuance of “Ferris Bueller’s Day’s Off” by revolving the story around rather than one character it does the same around the two similar minded teenage girls, but only coming at the same central “Ferris” themes from “another angle”. Essentially, after years of being 100% conservative and studious in all manners of their lives, the two young girls now try valiantly to be like all of the other seemingly less academically inclined students by doing whatever they have been doing for past 4 years…………….(as Ferris) living life without guard rails, no restrictions, being deceptive, being impulsive, taking risk  and just being a jerk (here and there). So for the first 40 minutes of the 1:40 minute running time “Amy and Molly” are truly an entertaining bundle of breakneck intellectual energy to enjoy. They are super witty from beginning to the end of the film all the while exuding (both comically and dramatically speaking) some real angst about their last evening as high school students. They show genuine emotional honesty about having apprehensions of moving on separately to new places in the world meeting new people while trying to being cool for the first time.

But midway through the film in their slightly over played efforts to get to the “happening party”…… “Amy and “Molly fall under the hallucinogenic influences of a drug that was slipped to them by a friend to make them loosen up. The scene was meant to be smart and funny, but to me it fell terribly flat as they begin imagining themselves way too long as being something other than human. And It’s at this same point for me the film went from being imaginative, engaging and whip smart to more of an exercise of being redundant and one dimensional. And it stays there for a way too long 30 minutes.

In its effort to suddenly stop being funny to being more of a transcendent serious dramatic coming of age film, the two ladies and the entire cast cease to be as relevant and interesting as before and more muddled down in subplots of teenage deception, awkward first time sexual experiences and an unbelievable get out of jail card explanation. Also the use of Noble Prize Peace Winner Malala Yousafzai name “Malala” as some code for not refusing a friends request” seemed to be inappropriate and a bit misguided. It was especially in poor taste when you probably can imagine that 90% of the viewing audience don’t even know who she is as the noted Pakistani activist who was shot in the face for her wanting and other females to go to school for an education.

While these specific 30 minutes of the film had some of the air come out of its pace, it still manages to recover in the last 10 minutes to refocus on its basic story of these two best friends being symbiotically linked through thick and thin.

To Actress Olivia Wilde's credit her debut effort as the director accomplished an awful lot of real solid work by reinvigorating how we all see current and future high-school comedies. Particularly so with this current teenage generation that seems to have an obsessive entitled mindset for wanting credit for just being in the room. Wilde adroitly navigates this tricky terrain of smarts and naiveté by balancing it all with reality by taking full advantage of the film’s rare “R” rating. Not by relying exclusively on being solely vulgar, lazy or boorish, but keeping her camera crisply focused on a solid enough written word (overall) to guide her into making the words coming out of this young cast minds and mouths always feel contemporarily real (for the most part).

“Booksmart” is never mean spirted, toxic or morally preachy. Rather it is always looking for the sharper smarter approach and details in how these teens talk and interact with one another. And by doing so, Wilde has delivered not a great film but more of an authentic in the moment  solid look at this newer teen generation coming to a neighborhood near you very soon. A generation uniquely filled with their own brand of aspirations, own brand of dreams, own brand of relationships, own brand of fears and yes own brand of deceptions …………from “another angle”.

3.00 Stars