Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Olivia Wilde
Written by: Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Katie Silberman
Produced by: Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Megan Ellison, Chelsea Barnard, Jessica Elbaum
Starring: Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstien, Jessica Williams, Jason Sudeikis, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte.
Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) have been besties all through senior high, working their butts off so they can be accepted into the right college.
Not that they can talk about what college they’re going to with the other graduates; don’t want to make them feel bad about their choices and all.
Until Molly overhears a couple of the cool kids calling her personality, butter-face. She might be cute, but her personality needs a paper bag. Case-in-point, she’s just been correcting bathroom graffiti grammar.
So when Molly finds out the kids who have been partying all year have also gotten into Harvard, Stanford or jobs working for Google, she realises she’s missed out.
It’s time to party like it’s 2019 for the next twenty-four hours before graduation, to make up for all the fun times missed while studying like an idiot.
Sounds familiar, right?!
Another American graduation film.
Booksmart can’t be dressed up as anything else but graduates trying to figure out the next step: friendship, the safety of that friendship in a world of the unknown, sex and crushes and all the obsession and humiliation that goes with it. So yeah, it’s familiar but jez the humour is fun.
We get a bumper sticker on the back of a teen feminist’s car stating: Hot flushes? Power surges!
And a principle who spends his spare time driving an Uber while piecing together his detective novel featuring a pregnant woman whose baby kicks when she gets close to a clue.
The humour is off-beat and funny without trying too hard.
Even girls losing it in argument has been handled by first feature director Olivia Wilde so it’s not screeching but drama, somehow making a teen movie not annoying.
Molly (Beanie Feldstein) should have been a nerdy hard-to-take teen, but she’s adorable in her persistence and abrasive Slytherin nature. And her bestie Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), the loyal, patient, keen for her first girl-on-girl moment was believable making her sexual orientation a normal teen struggle rather than an attempt at the contemporary – it’s all the same teen stuff we’ve seen before made more relevant.
More than anything, Booksmart’s good for a giggle.