Booksmart Review
Booksmart The Official Jack Review
I had not heard of Booksmart until its SXSW premiere earlier this year. I’m sure movies have used this festival as a marketing ploy for as long as it has been around, but I remember it first a few years back with Baby Driver, where they drop the trailer right after the festival premiere to catch the hype coming out of the screenings. I remember hating that I had to wait until June for that movie. Now there was Booksmart which I just learned existed and next thing I know it’s sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and has a hilarious trailer attached to it. Suddenly, May went from having 45 blockbuster movies I was excited for to having a little indie comedy jump up to the top of my “can’t wait” list.
This movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel at any turns; but for an indie comedy, that was never the goal. The diverse cast of characters is the draw of this movie, lead with some bodacious performances from Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as Molly and Amy. They play two high schoolers that spend all their time studying to get into great colleges, until the night before graduation when they decide they want everyone to know how fun they are.
Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein in Booksmart
Molly is the class president and she is ecstatic to get to go to Stanford after working hard all of her life to get to that point. She has had to constantly deal with all of her peers that love to live life, but she deems them as less than herself because they will have “peaked in high school.” Feldstein plays this character with a lot of mastery. She shows clear weakness and self-doubt when she is questioned on her choice to focus on school, but she shows strength in the moments that she doubles down on a choice she has made. It could have very easily titled one way or the other, of her coming off as too weak or her coming off as an arrogant asshole, but that sweet spot in the middle makes her a loveable protagonist for us to connect with.
Amy is the other half of this unstoppable duo. She is much more anxious and indecisive than Molly is, she never confronts her peers and just sits back and slings sarcastic remarks from afar. She has a high school crush that she dreams of just having a full conversation with, and gloraiously fumbles at every opportunity imaginable. After graduation, she is planning to spend her summer abroad helping to bring tampons to people in third world countries before heading to college in the fall with Molly.
When we are first introduced to this world, we meet its wide cast of characters filling just about every stereotypical archetype one can imagine roaming a high school’s hallway. The cast is stacked with Jason Sudeikis as the principal, and Will Forte and Lisa Kudrow as Amy’s overly loving parents. These three own the little screen time they have, providing a lot of laughs per minute; but the focus is on the kids. We meet all of them and quickly pin them as the jock, the bully, the rich kid, the class clown, and so on, but over the course of the movie find that every single one of them are complex characters struggling just as much as our own Molly and Amy are. Skylar Gisondo and Billie Lourd in particular give strong performances as the strangest couple in the school. Lourd pops up at some point in just about every scene and is this strange and mysterious figure, playing the role similarly to her time on Scream Queens. She chews on every word provided to her, leading me to be creeped out by her to feeling progressively more giddy after every one of her appearances.
Billie Lourd and Kaitlyn Dever in Booksmart
Director Olivia Wilde captures the delicate balance of humor and heart with ease. Seamlessly a scene would shift back and forth from making me laugh to making me cry while all keeping a very consistent tone throughout. The build up of anticipation throughout the film was expertly executed, as we watch the youth do nothing but have blind hope that their dreams will come true, but when the house of cards fall it still stings because you want nothing more than to see these characters happy. The cinematography throughout the movie is though provoking, with one shot in particular, Amy swimming in the pool, that has been stuck in my head since I saw the film. I was also intrigued by the way this film handled being set in modern day. Without spoiling anything, there were multiple scenes where the usage of cell phones made me think about how most movies don’t know how to properly incorporate phones so they just don’t include them for the most part. Sorry for the vagueness there, but keep an eye open for this because I found it wholly unique and really impressive.
All of the movie completely hinges of the chemistry and connection of Molly and Amy, and by the time the credits roll, you love these characters like you love your best friends. Maybe it connected with me because I was very similar to these characters when I was in high school, just way dumber than them because lord knows I wasn’t even thinking of applying to Stanford. There is just something about watching a real friendship blossom on screen, where as the audience we can tell that they aren’t acting to be best friends and have blast because they simply were having the time of their lives filming this. I’m sure every time a director makes a movie they want this kind of spark in their talent, so I give the casting director a lot of kudos for finding the perfect leads to carry this movie.
After much reflection of this movie, I hope people of all walks of life can watch Booksmart and leave the theater with at least one takeaway. It could be anything from an appreciation for their peers, to just leaving with a big smile from all the hilarity, but I really believe that there is something for everyone to love in this film.
Final Score: 9.5/10