Told from a female perspective but playing like a cheap Netflix fusion of American Graffiti and Superbad, Booksmart hopes (in vain) that we can look past its lead’s impish behaviour because she’s more-studious-than-thou.
USA
2.5*
Director:
Olivia Wilde
Screenwriters:
Emily Halpern
Sarah Haskins
Susanna Fogel
Katie Silberman
Director of Photography:
Jason McCormick
Running time: 90 minutes
There are few people as annoying as know-it-alls. Now imagine someone like this playing the lead in a feature film and failing to recognise her own deficiencies at any point in the story. It is near impossible to root for such an individual. And yet, this is the main character in Booksmart, a film that takes place over roughly a 24-hour period on the last day of school and seems to pitch itself as a female-driven American Graffiti or Superbad. Unfortunately, it has little more going for it than meagre production values, a forgettable soundtrack and a complete lack of visual creativity.
Molly (Beanie Feldstein) is student body president and will be valedictorian at her high school graduation the next day. Seemingly living a life of privilege (we never see her parents, and the implication is that she somehow lives on her own on the top floor of a big duplex apartment unit), she sees herself on a glide path to the Supreme Court bench within a few years. Clearly, there is no shortage of hubris, although it is not rooted in anything except grades.
She and her best friend, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), have spent their entire school career seemingly insulated from any and all social contact, as we soon learn when Molly overhears her classmates maliciously gossiping about her. Confident in her own academic superiority, however, she confronts them by suggesting graduation is the end of the road for them, only to learn that the cool kids have way more layers than she thought: One is going to Harvard, another is headed to Stanford and the most popular guy in school has been accepted at Georgetown, while the resident stoner and long-term school student has been recruited as a programmer for Google. She not only misread the classroom: She has misread the classroom for years and never learnt anything except her school work. By the looks of it, social interaction and life, in general, have completely passed her by.
For Amy, life is somewhat more complicated. An out but introverted lesbian for the past two years, she has focused all her energy on work (and, presumably, the high-maintenance friendship with Molly) and has yet to find an outlet for her teenage hormones like her peers. She has super-religious parents who are fully supportive of their daughter, so getting laid is (as in so many other films) actually the most pressing challenge to her otherwise blissfully elite existence.
Having just realised that they have missed out on being teenagers, and given the symbolic importance of the last night of school, Molly devises a plan to attend the year’s biggest party and rack up some experiences before she graduates to residing inside the law library at Yale. Basically, her big plan is just to go to the party, where she will get to hook up with her uber-popular vice-president, Amy will finally make out with a girl, and they will somehow make up for a youth ensconced in a bubble of superiority. This “plan” is pathetic, but what is even worse is that the film somehow allows most of Molly’s dreams to come true, without her having to change a thing about herself.
The characters’ passivity is mirrored by the film itself, which has little in the way of either physical or audiovisual dynamism. Most scenes feel desperately empty, and shots with more than two characters involved in the action are few and far between. The screenplay’s central focus is on the Molly/Amy duo, and yet, by the end of the film, they are still two-dimensional, at best. The film isn’t interested in doing more than scratch the surface, and in the one big confrontation between the two girls, their dialogue fades out so that we can’t hear them, lest they appear to be more complex than a blank page.
By far the most interesting character is their cool English teacher, Miss Fine, played by the supremely talented Jessica Williams, who belongs in a much better film. The amount of personality, back story and feeling she brings to her character in just a handful of scenes is simply astounding. Jason Sudeikis is another comedian in the cast and turns up at school as the principal, although his talents are much better deployed later on when he pitches up as a Lyft driver. The topical issue of teacher pay is hinted at but probably too serious a subject to address in a film that is clearly more about lip service than thoughtful speech. (Props are given, however, when props are due: Uganda is dinged for its abysmal LGBT record.)
It might be unfair to expect any film about high school seniors to ever equal (never mind surpass) the brilliance of Will Gluck’s Easy A. But Booksmart‘s central characters are nowhere near as dynamic, independent and charismatic as Emma Stone, and the camera, by comparison, looks like it is fixed in place. In addition, while Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson in Easy A have rightly been called the best movie parents of all time, Molly’s mother and father are inexplicably absent. Meanwhile, Amy’s very Christian parents (played by Lisa Kudrow and Will Forte) only appear once and come across as overwrought caricatures every bit as childish as a baby on a sugar high.
Booksmart touts its feminism by pointing to other strong women (Molly’s room is adorned with pictures of Michelle Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg) instead of infusing its own potentially thought-provoking central duo – a loud feminist and an out lesbian – with any kind of energy or insight beyond juvenile frolicking. They know everything, but they know nothing. Worst of all, it took them their entire young lives to figure out that being self-centred outsiders has its drawbacks.
It is incredible that it took four writers to come up with this shallow narrative headlined by a girl devoid of self-reflection and her omega-female sidekick. All the students change their minds about their peers within a single night and mostly without any serious drama. The scales fall off their eyes as if by magic, and by the end, there is absolute harmony and understanding. One half expects them to burst into a full-on musical number.
This film is often as nauseating as the excessive compliments Molly and Amy give each other and deserves a failing grade.