Booksmart

The high school buddy comedy has a long and storied history, but most of them boil down to a few repeatable factors a group of friends, a deadline of sorts (prom, graduation, or the end of summer break) in which to complete an action, wacky misadventures along the way, and a lesson learned by the end of the experience, resulting in growth for the main characters. American Pie, for example: the boys vow to lose their virginities by prom, they get up to some shenanigans along the way, and when the deadline approaches and opportunities present themselves, they all learn something about themselves and grow as people. It's a simple formula, and when done right, it works like a charm. There's one element I glossed over, though, and that is that the friends are almost always boys. It's a lot easier to engage in the misadventures and achieve the character growth with boys, narratively speaking, because teenage boys aren't, by and large, the brightest folks in our human menagerie. They're the ones who replicate Jackass-style stunts for TikTok. They're edgy for the sake of it. And they're permanently horny. Leaning into those stereotypes makes it easy for the karmic retribution and moral lessons to land, because you can see how they grow from self-destructive walking erections into more fully formed people with maturity and an appreciation for the world around them. Booksmart looks at all of that and throws it out the window. It's not a bunch of dumb boys, it's two smart girls, and I do mean smart: Both are headed for Ivy League schools. One is graduating valedictorian. They have dedicated their school careers to academic excellence, foregoing parties and drinking and boyfriends and everything ... and on the eve of their graduation, when they learn that a number of their drug-taking, sex-having, free-wheeling classmates are also going to prestigious colleges and have careers lined up, they have regrets. They dedicate the last night of being in high school to doing all the things they never did. Everything you know about high school buddy movies is basically flipped around. Booksmart's best features are its lead characters and its casting. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever have a natural rapport. I believe their friendship and love for one another, and when they get into the inevitable third-act argument, I believe their grievances have been simmering under the surface for years. Their characters (Feldstein plays Molly, Dever plays Amy) feel fleshed out, and not just as the nerdy over-achievers. Each has their own hopes and fears, their own personality quirks that make them individuals. They are the beating heart of this movie. It was so easy to root for them, even knowing how some events would turn out, because Feldstein and Dever were just so good at it. The writing and directing is a mixed bag. The writing and directing were handled by women, and four of the five producers were women too, and it shows in the final product. That's a good thing, as it lends the movie an authenticity that "man guessing how a teenage girl would act" rarely comes off. The two distinct personalities and how they both feed off of and rub up against each other is something only women would know. The way one misreads the signals she's getting from someone she likes, and how the other fumbles through her first sexual experience and the shame she feels when it goes sideways. it all feels like stuff drawn from the experience of being an 18 year old girl. But there are also trade-offs that bring Booksmart down a peg. This was Olivia Wilde's first time as a director, and hooboy, does it show. Shot composition is as basic as it gets. The sex scene I alluded to before is shot very respectfully with no male-gazey aspects whatsoever ... but when Amy decides to strip down to her underwear and dive into a pool, there's lots of long, lingering shots of her body, and it feels kinda gross. But the biggest indicator of first-time directorial fumbling are the needle drops. SO MANY NEEDLE DROPS. I counted six in the first twenty minutes alone. Wilde carpet-bombs the movie with song after song after song like a child dumping quarters in a jukebox, and it gets exhausting. And while the music isn't diegetic, I'd think that, to reflect the girls' political leanings, they'd have picked a soundtrack that better reflects that. Regardless, if you're using pop songs to get across a point in the narrative, that's not good storytelling, that's a cheat code. Let the story tell the story. Speaking of the story, though, the biggest issue with Booksmart is that it misunderstands the formula of the buddy high school movie. I don't mean they get the formula wrong, because they keep it intact, to an almost slavish degree. No, I mean that the writers misunderstand that the whole journey of the genre is to humble and educate a bunch of idiotic, self-absorbed, hormone-addled cretins. To bring up American Pie again, think about their goals: lose their virginities by any means necessary. One boy enrolls in choir because it has lots of girls, and he assumes they're hard-up and desperate, so it should be a slam dunk. One nags and negs his girlfriend, who could not be more clear that she isn't ready. Don't get me started on the main character and his objectification issues (and the felony he commits with the foreign exchange student). Same thing with The Last American Virgin, Porky's, and dozens of others. The hijinks and the culmination of the movie are meant to teach them the error of their ways. What have Amy and Molly done to be humbled over and over again? Sure, Molly's a bit arrogant in assuming everybody else isn't as smart as her, but that's it. Focusing on academics over getting blitzed at a party and hooking up with randos isn't a moral failure, it's a choice. Both are valid life paths. And yet Booksmart spends its run time punishing these girls for that choice by having them force-fed drugs, having a run-in with a serial killer, getting their hearts broken, and having a huge argument. I can't find the humor in their wacky misadventures when it seems like they did nothing to deserve it. I did enjoy Booksmart, and that's almost solely on the backs of its two lead actors. Every ounce of realism, emotion, and impact this movie has is because of them and their chemistry. I adored them and I got choked up at the end. And the movie around them isn't bad, despite my criticisms of it. I'm also a sucker for coming-of-age stories, so it's hard for me to be too mad. I just can see the levels this movie could've hit with some more care and attention.