The next great high-school movie is here. And I do mean great. Booksmart is that rare treat: a perfect film. Smart, funny, wise, sparkling with wit both visually and in its snappy dialogue, and far, far kinder than we have been trained to expect from movies about teenagers. Or maybe Booksmart is simply an authentic reflection of These Kids Today. Are they really this nice? (I mean, the few I know are. But they can’t all be this sweet and open and broadminded, can they?) They make me feel old, but also my heart breaks for them in the best possible way.
I’m tempted to call Booksmart the new Clueless. This movie is emphatically not about romance, but there’s a lot of overlap anyway, in verve and style. And also in how this movie’s jointed-at-the-hip bestie protagonists, Molly (Beanie Feldstein: Lady Bird, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever: Beautiful Boy, The Front Runner), are — like Clueless’s Cher — sailing through high school on a wave of popularity that has felt like success to them, until they now come to realize that they have both overestimated their own triumphs and underestimated almost everything about their friends and classmates. (Booksmart is also set in Los Angeles with a similar “everywhere in LA is 20 minutes” vibe, though now with Uber and the complications of the dreaded 2-percent phone battery.) Unlike Cher, who struggled academically, Amy and Molly are classroom overachievers — class president and valedictorian Molly is on her way to Yale, in fact — but, like Cher, they still have a lot to learn about themselves.
And they are going to cram in all that learning (or so they think) on this, the last night before graduation after the very last day of high school. I’m not sure that the coming-of-age story gets any more coming-of-age-ier than at that sharp and sudden cusp between high school and the rest of your life, which — even I can remember this, all these decades later — seems to take forever to get to and then crashes down over you with a startling abruptness. One day you’re a high-school kid, and literally the next… you’re a grown-up (at least in theory). Molly and Amy have been nose-to-the-books for the past four years, and full of disdain for the kids who have neglected school (or so they’ve believed) in favor of fun, and get a smack-in-the-face eye-opener about how much they’ve missed out on. Now, they have “one night left to have partied and studied in high school.”
It will not be pretty. It will be hilarious in that laugh-and-cry-at-the-same-time way that makes this movie work even more powerfully if you’re already long past adolescence and recall that bittersweet ache that came with burgeoning self-awareness: the pain but also the hard-won — and surprisingly gratifying — resignation of giving up presuming that you know everything about everything, that you don’t have to know everything about everything. That comes with granting other people the permission to be as flawed and as human as you are. And allowing yourself to be flawed and human, too. I feel like this perfectionist drive is a particular affliction of high-achieving teen girls, and I am so happy to see a movie like Booksmart granting leave to those girls to go easier on themselves. I was like Molly and Amy, too, and would have loved to see a movie like this when I was a teenager. (I had to settle for Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. Neither was Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. These kids today: they have no idea how much better their cinematic teen role models are!)
I adore absolutely everything about this movie. The vividly drawn characters: every single one of Molly and Amy’s classmates are beautiful and original and distinct and so warm and human and wonderfully weird, as are Molly and Amy themselves. (There’s no high-school villain to be found here. I cannot recall another movie about high school that didn’t need a bad guy — or bad girl — to create engaging conflict.) The complete lack of grossout humiliation, which so many lazy teen comedies fall back on; no one here needs to be shamed or embarrassed about anything they want or anything they do, and that is so very sublime, so very humane. The generous portrayals of the kids’ elders, like the school principal, briefly but boldly sketched by Jason Sudeikis (Downsizing, Colossal) as an overworked, underpaid GenXer exhausted by the unflagging enthusiasm of his juniors; and Jessica Williams (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Hot Tub Time Machine 2) as the cool teach not that much older than her students but unexpectedly finding that she is way further along on her life path than they are. The portrait of utter unwavering support that best girlfriends give each other; Amy and Molly are my new heroes, in all their magnificent blinkered self-absorption giving way to melancholy adulthood. I so very stan. I would love to see a sequel set 20 years from now, so we can find out where they end up.
It’s almost impossible to believe that this is the first feature film that actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde has made. (The script is by Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman.) It’s so self-assured, so inventive, so, well, high-achieving in a way that Amy and Molly would recognize but without any of their selfish (if also amiable) arrogance. Booksmart easily leaps over that first-time-director bar of “hey, he [almost always he] manages not to trip over his own feet here!” This is a movie that is confident but also seemingly effortless. It is pure joy… and pure joy about the life experience of girls. Which makes Booksmart even more unusual, and more welcome. Brava.
Watch the first six minutes of Booksmart, and you will be compelled to see the rest of it:
Wow. Sold.
Molly’s reaction when she discovers what schools the “losers” are going to attend is priceless.
Beanie Feldstein is a goddamn national treasure.
I’m so happy you loved this. Yes, it is that amazing – so many different kinds of kids – all so nice and complicated in distinct ways. I was a high school teacher for several years in the Bay Area, and everything about this movie feels authentic (although obviously a couple situations are exaggerated for comic effect). So many girls’ coming of age stories focus on the negative and the traumatic, and of course those challenges exist and should be addressed, but it’s so wonderful to see a movie that’s optimistic and positive and just plain fun.
For decades, boys have had Bill and Ted, and Wayne and Garth, and Harold and Kumar, and Gary and Wyatt, and Seth and Evan, and dozens more characters that just go through life trying to find joy in a world that doesn’t threaten them constantly. I’m not saying there haven’t been the occasional Romy and Michelles, but this movie feels refreshing, much needed, and unique. This is what most (admittedly wealthy and privileged) kids are like – boys and girls – they see the best in people and just want to have a good time, figure out their passions, and be excellent to each other along the way.
There are too many great moments in the script to mention, but one standout is a potential gross out moment that would have been played for humiliation and laughs in a typical teen movie, but is handled realistically and compassionately here. The long dance scene shot is beautifully lit and genuinely funny. The soundtrack is exactly what girls like this would listen to, and every song is perfectly chosen and smoothly incorporated. It’s just a goofy road trip/one crazy night movie with a big heart and I love everything about it.
I rewatched Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey a few months ago. I still enjoyed it quite a lot, but if I was to apply a harsher revised reading, it’s the story of how two straight white male idiots fail upwards spectacularly and realise that the world does revolve around them as their terrible white boy shit-rock becomes a panacea that literally reshapes the whole world into a utopia. Now there’s some hyper-indulgent fantasy. Has any movie about girls ever been so arrogant? Haven’t been enough of them to get that far. This isn’t actually how I feel watching the film. It’s fine. I just wish that there were as many films like it with similarly affable goofball girls in the lead, who dance through their stories with as much carefree abandon as these dudes enjoy. Until it’s no longer an issue, that demand needs repeating. Booksmart shows the way forward.
Excellent point, but even Booksmart is about these two girls being humbled and coming to realize that they’re not as all-that as they had previously believed. Movies about girls and women — even when they’re as bright and lively and funny as this one — are *always* more realistic than the ones about boys, which often indulge their narcissism and their self-centeredness. I cannot think of a single movie about girls or women that is, as you say, so arrogant. Certainly not one with any mainstream appeal or impact.
This was made particularly clear to me when I saw Booksmart, because I saw Sing Street the same day, a high school movie centered on boys. It’s enjoyable as well, but much more of a wish-fulfillment fantasy (the director says as much in his commentary) where the boy overcomes all odds, wins over the bullies, sticks it to the principal, gets a band together that is somehow immediately really good, and sails off at the end with The Girl. The Girl, of course, has no female friendships, and exists solely to be muse and aspiration.
And the day before that I saw Wine Country on Netflix, also hilarious, about middle-aged women — but again, it’s about them reaffirming their friendship and support for each other in the midst of the failures and frustrations of their lives, rather than a fantasy about being on top of the world. I think we desperately need more films like Booksmart and Wine Country, but female versions of Bill & Ted would be great as well.
I love Wine Country and really need to write about it asap.
Sing Street has seriously great music, but I am so done with boys’ wish-fulfillment fantasies.
I’ve had music from both Sing Street and Wine Country in my rotation for a few days now.
EDIT: And I figure I can enjoy them for a few more days before the Rocketman soundtrack takes over. :-)
One of the only movies I can think of that’s a pure woman (and queer)-centered fantasy wish-fulfillment narrative is the 2014 Swedish comedy Dyke Hard, which has an all-queer cast (actors as well as characters) and is set in a completely queer world and is about the titular down and out lesbian rock band journeying to a battle of the bands and meeting various eccentrics along the way. It’s silly and I absolutely love it but it’s a completely unknown, obscure, ultra-low-budget schlock movie and I seem to be the only person who has ever heard of it. Early in the great interview below the director Bitte Andersson states her intention of making a queer movie that is only fun and escapist and isn’t meant to reflect any real-world problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaHJcdStqck
I love this discussion, because I keep trying to think of counter-examples (other than Dyke Hard) and can’t come up with any. There are movies about arrogant or self-centered women, like The Bronze, and there are movies that cross over into pure wish-fulfillment, like Trainwreck, which fits the Judd Apatow tropes to a female lead, but no matter how over-the-top the fantasy is, there’s always a portion of the film where the woman is humbled. Long Shot may come the closest to self-indulgent fantasy, among recent films, and it not only has a male co-lead, but it plays with the schlub-gets-goddess clichés, sometimes almost to the point of parody.
Still drawing a blank too. Dyke Hard certainly isn’t in the same cinematic area as other titles resembling Booksmart. It’s more like a John Waters movie, or a Troma movie, if they were bearable. Hmm… A mainstream comedy in a somewhat realistic milieu with women in the lead where they aren’t hindered or humbled by factors related to being women (if that’s the criteria). Must be some obvious titles I’m simply overlooking. … right? Suggestions very welcome.
I have certainly never heard of Dyke Hard.
I’d forgotten the plot of Bill & Ted 2, but if that’s what happens, then the premise for the upcoming sequel is interesting: “Two would-be rockers from San Dimas, California, were once told they’d save the universe during a time-traveling adventure, but find themselves as middle-aged dads still trying to crank out a hit song and fulfill their destiny.” Maybe this is the film that casts a critical eye on the arrogance of the previous films and causes all the old fans to whine that Bill and Ted have been ruined by the SJWs. :-)
I could see this as a film that 2019’s Keanu would get behind. :-)
From the moment Molly and Amy greet each other with dancing, I said “Well, this is pretty much the greatest movie ever”. The way Beanie Feldstein poses and shimmies down those stairs is magisterially wonderful, and it carries on from there. One of those films where it hits you that this is what ‘normal’ is, and that all the depressingly crap comedy movies are really weird outliers that shun human experience. As soon as you see it done right, it makes all the movies you’ve slugged through that didn’t even try to reach for what this movie achieves – and makes it look effortless – seem like such a waste. Anyway, I have to rest as I’m actually sore from laughing. Been a long time since a comedy movie has had that effect.
The Next Day: Woke up in a bizarre alternate world where Booksmart is being lazily and inaccurately described as being a ripoff of some godawful teen comedy about horny boys from twelve years ago. Might just have to watch Booksmart again to remind myself of what the world should be like.
I keep watching those first six minutes over and over again just to see the dancing. :-)
I teach high school. I watched about 5 minutes of the six minute clip.
I recognize the caricatures in play, but not the people.
Basically, I hate everyone I just met and would have quit years ago if I had to deal with them on a daily basis.
Maybe I should quit…
I agree. The movie was terrible. The bottom line is that it degrades the whole concept of learning and achievement as a worthwhile goal, while promoting the joy of drunken, drug-infested orgies. The whole premise that these two geniuses could not find the party being attended by 200 of their classmates is preposterous. The characters are almost all flat and exaggerated to the point of stupidity.
Do you remember your high school years? I was a huge nerd who hung around other overachievers in a fairly wealthy area, and only two of the kids out of the twenty or so in our group embraced the concept of learning and achievement as a worthwhile goal. The vast majority got good grades out of a sense of obligation to their parents, and cut every corner they could when it came to school work.
Years later, I became a teacher in that same district, and if anything, the kids were even less focused on learning and achievement in a purely academic sense. Kids are curious, and they do like learning, but this includes extracurricular social, physical, and emotional learning. A great teacher can fire up kid’s passion about a subject, but that’s a relatively rare occurrence, and most people are passionate in one or two specific areas rather than passionate about learning as a whole.
Kids figure out by their teen years that the American education system is primarily a tool to teach corporate skills like showing up on time, working as a team, time management, and following instructions. They view assignments as arbitrary hoops to jump through and grades as status signifiers in their peer group.
Add a truckload of hormones, privilege, and overconfident optimism, and you get kids very similar to Molly and Amy. They want to do the right thing and be good people, but have no solid foundation of experience, so their plans, dreams, and ideals are abstract and insubstantial. They can tweet the tweet, but they haven’t built a nest yet. Their entire social world is confined to a very small arena and set of desires.
I agree that many of the characters are initially one dimensional, but one of the strengths of this script is that it makes an effort to strip away some of the flat, exaggerated stupidity, and at least partially subvert the simple stereotypes that initially define them (the drama club nerds being a notable exception). It’s a goofy comedy, but it has a message – that you shouldn’t look down on or oversimplify people who don’t share your values and perspectives. They have reasons for doing the things they do, they have emotional lives just as valid as yours, and everyone is more complicated than you think. That message mirrors the arc of Molly’s and Amy’s relationship. Molly has isolated herself so much that she hasn’t considered the thoughts and desires of not only her other classmates, but also her best friend.
SPOILER ALERT
The first scene is Molly reaffirming her own isolation and superiority – in the final scene, Amy finally suggests something that she wants to do and Molly embraces her plan for once. It goes from a self-centered “fuck those losers” to a cooperative “fuck yeah!” For a silly Harold and Kumar “this is our mission tonight” kind of movie (btw how many male teen characters in movies espouse “learning and achievement as a worthwhile goal?”), it has a surprising amount of emotional depth, authenticity, and compassion. That climactic long shot that follows Amy’s desperate search through the party for Molly has a palpable sense of urgency and despair that you don’t get in most teen flicks.
END SPOILER
At the end of the day, you’re free to hate the characters and the movie – I agree that the plot structure feels contrived and discontinuous at points, but just like its characters, I think the film has a little more depth than you give it credit for. It’s certainly a promising start for Wilde as a director. Her choices about when to bring in music and when to completely cut the sound were particularly impressive.
I feel like you saw a completely different movie from the one I saw.
Can we use the poor performance of Booksmart at the box office as another sign of imminent total cultural meltdown (to go along with actual global meltdown)? That’s what I’m telling myself. “It’s too good to be a popular hit” reeks of smug self-reassurance of the superiority of my own taste in the face of mainstream indifference, but there I go saying it anyway. Booksmart is the kind of movie that rarely plays widely in theatres anymore, so maybe its small returns aren’t a huge surprise. Surely it must be the widest release ever for a queer film (though it wasn’t marketed as such)? [Or a film with casual, unremarked-upon queerness, I should say] Went and saw it again and laughed and cried just as much, if not more.
It’s definitely a sign that the culture is changing. I fear that within five years — quite possibly much sooner — movies like this won’t get a theatrical release at all. Everything except the biggest of blockbusters will go direct to streaming.
I loved Booksmart and would have loved for it to do better, but there were a lot of factors that played into its poor showing, I think. Arguably it was poor timing to release it on Memorial Day against heavy hitters like Aladdin and John Wick 3 (and films like Avengers: Endgame are still playing). Arguably the story — about a bunch of privileged young white people (albeit with some queer representation) — didn’t spark as much interest when diversity tends to attract bigger audiences. And the studio has been criticized for releasing it widely instead of starting small and then building word of mouth and expanding, like past indie hits; similar films like Eighth Grade (from just last year) and Lady Bird (from just two years ago) did the slow rollout strategy and did much better.
For “widest release ever for a queer film” I would nominate Bohemian Rhapsody — and, of course, Rocketman this weekend, which apparently is even queerer.
Arguably, Booksmart is slightly queerer than Rocketman (but see both, they’re both great).
There is a LOT of anger being directed at
A24Annapurna, Booksmart‘s distributor, for its bungling of the film’s release.I was comparing Rocketman (or what I’ve heard about it) to Rhapsody, not Booksmart. And I’ve got my Rocketman tickets. Can’t wait. :-)
Booksmart is queerer than BR, too. :-)
Er, yes, that would stand to reason, if Rocketman is queerer than BR (as I was saying) and Booksmart is queerer than Rocketman (as you were saying). :-)
I think this article sums up the release issues well.
https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/booksmart-movie-box-office-superbad-disappointment.html
Also, here’s a good piece on something the film doesn’t do well — its blind spot on class — which I’ve been thinking about a bit.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alisonwillmore/booksmart-olivia-wilde-money-class-college-acceptance
Oops! As I corrected in the comment you’re replying to, of course it’s Annapurna who is distributing Booksmart, not A24.
True. And though the film is not blindingly white, it’s still nowhere near as diverse as the city it is set in (LA’s population is fully half Latinx).
I suspect it may be one of those works of entertainment—like Freaks and Geeks or The Rocky Horror Picture Show or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Veronica Mars—that has a long afterlife; whether or not it becomes a mainstream hit, it will become influential.
The cast and crew of the movie seem to be showing up in every newspaper, magazine, and talk show that I see, and the film is screening widely in New York,* so I think it will develop at least a respectable following.
*ETA: That may make the difference between “I had to drive across state lines to find a theatre that was showing it, but it was worth the effort” and “I went because it was the only thing I hadn’t seen at the multiplex, but now it’s my favorite film.”