Booksmart: Review by @Kush_Hayes
Every decade or so, there comes that movie focused on two friends, unpopular misfits, trying to capture “that moment” the night before high school graduation. While “That Moment” is different for each set of friends in each movie, the premise is always the same: We have to go out tonight and treat it like its our last night. Its a premise that never fails and delivers a cast of memorable characters each time. Booksmart takes those same applications and still makes a different movie. But I guess its also a different time.
In every movie Im comparing this too, including, Dazed and Confused, Cant Hardly Wait, Superbad, part of the problem is getting into the party. Theres always a plan to sneak in, or “I know someone” or anything where they will get denied access to the event. In this movie, the girls biggest obstacle is getting the address and getting to the event, but once they are there they are welcome with open arms and pleasant surprises.
Speaking about the girls, lets discuss our two protagonists. Valedictorian Molly and BFF Amy have been focused all high school, and maybe even further back, to getting the best grades and getting into the best colleges. And it worked! However, while feeling very good about herself, its clearly rubbed other students and some faculty the wrong way. Molly overhears a last day of school shit talk session about herself, and while she tries to play it cool, she smugs it up one time too many and it turns out everyone else either also got into a good school with a fraction of the effort, or are going immediately into a good career.
This is an eye opening revelation for Molly and its actually an interesting thought to say, “Oh, we’ve been the assholes this whole time. Lets take this last night, and show everyone we are not only not-assholes, but fun people as well.” They go on adventures, they end up at multiple parties before they find the one they want. They learn more about each other as well as themselves. This is all the standard recipe for this movie, but its the chemisty between Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) that hold the movie together. You are rooting for them the entire time. They have great chemistry together and interact with their supporting players flawlessly.
The supporting cast in this, never do you find one personality that you dislike. They all hold their place on screen, give fantastic deliveries and are written in away where side with them when dealing with Molly and Amy the last four years. A crowd pleaser and scene stealer in this goes by the name Billie Lourd, who is all wild card and just fun to watch disrupt everyone on screen.
Olivia Wilde, best known for her role on tvs House MD makes her directorial debut for a feature film. Lots of fun scenes, complimenting the writing, and taking things to places I did not know girls minds went. Very solid debut and I look forward to seeing more of Olivia Wildes eye behind the lense.
If you want to nitpick, the ending is just unbelievable, but we want to end the movie on a happy note and we got to get the kids to graduation. So if you dont want to roll with that, I think youre only punishing yourself.
I feel confident saying, currently, this is the best comedy of 2019.
Five out of Six Blueberries
Rated R for strong sexual content and language throughout, drug use and drinking - all involving teens.
Official Site
This review was originally published May 23rd 2019 on Kush And Kai
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