SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Funny, honest and heartfelt, and driven by rock-solid performances, Booksmart offers a powerful take on coming-of-age comedy and serves as a phenomenal director’s debut for Olivia Wilde.
Remember the person you were back in high school? Being a teenager could really suck sometimes, couldn’t it? If, like me, you can think back to your school days and find something to cringe about, then Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart just might help you see the funny side of it all. A comedy with a breathless, youthful energy, its humour, heart and soul all come from a genuine honesty and earnestness that’s hard not to respect. Unlike many other R-rated comedies, it displays a sharp wit, managing to find plenty of laughs without sacrificing taste, and balancing that with compelling drama about the mistakes we all make when we’re young and don’t know any better. We’ve grown up, and with a film as clever and heartfelt as Booksmart, it’s evident that comedy has now caught up.
It’s the final day before graduation, and things couldn’t possibly have gone better for Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein). Molly’s tenure as class president has come to a close with an offer to study at Yale, while Amy works to prepare for her trip to faraway Botswana. But when a chance encounter reveals that the kids who spent time partying as well as studying are still going to big-name colleges, their bubble bursts: they’ve done high school all wrong. But with one night left before graduation, the duo decide to make up for lost time by going to a massive party and breaking all the rules.
Cliches, including the existence of cliques, are quickly dismissed as outdated stereotypes and crushed underfoot as Booksmart forges on with its own far more accurate recreation of life in high school. The film’s side characters shine thanks to a willingness to subvert the stock characters that populate most high school dramas, but main characters Amy and Molly are ultimately the ones who claim the most time in the spotlight. Dever and Feldstein are spectacular both individually and with another, fully inhabiting an indestructible friendship between two young women whose personalities organically complement one another. Feldstein’s character Molly is outspoken and forceful, a contrast to Dever, who delivers a wonderfully understated performance as the quieter, more thoughtful Amy. Their rock-solid performances are invigorated even further by snappy and authentic dialogue, and general wholesomeness. “Malala” Molly says decisively, early on in the film, invoking the name of one of their beloved progressive icons and a clause in their informal friendship agreement. Amy’s awe-struck reaction to this apparently sacred invocation is played for laughs, but in the space of just a few words, we also come to appreciate the true depth of their bond and honest affection for one another.
Booksmart builds itself up using dozens of these small moments, and absolutely nails the delicate balancing act between laughs and drama each and every time as the night goes on. It turns up the dial so gradually, you don’t even notice you’ve arrived at its spectacular climax before it hits you, seemingly out of nowhere. The story progresses at a breathless pace from hilarious set piece to hilarious set piece, striking a variety of different tones. Sometimes it draws laughs from a shot of our two leads strolling into a library at midnight set to Leikeli47’s Attitude, while other times it’s making rude jokes about accidentally playing porn over speakers and going on a bad trip after consuming drugs. It’s made all the more extraordinary by the fact that it still incorporates a powerful message about friendship at the same time. The contrast it offers to your typical male-centric R-rated comedy is stark and refreshing; while it retains plenty of raunchiness and drops a few hundred F-bombs over the course of an hour and a half, it takes a subtler, female-focused approach to both comedy and drama. Olivia Wilde proves her mettle from the director’s chair too. Booksmart has carefully restrained camerawork and bold, technically sophisticated sequences in equal measure, including an impressive underwater sequence and a standout shot where the camera sways almost lazily between Amy and Molly as they argue, surrounded by the lights of their classmates’ smartphones, recording the incident in real-time.
Booksmart proves that, with a shift in perspective and a focus on creating real drama rather than just trying to be silly or gross, there’s still room to transform your typical, run-of-the-mill high school comedy into something refreshing. There’s something incredibly true to life about both the humour and the drama that unfolds on screen, and no suspension of disbelief is required in order for you to find something to laugh about. There’s an honesty about its depiction of high school life and an earnestness in its attempts to make its audience see the funny side of it all. It works to earn your respect, and it most definitely has mine.
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