Booksmart looks set to be the best comedy of 2019.
Olivia Wilde has succeeded in creating a charming coming of age tale which combines an indie feel with blockbuster set pieces that bring the action to life.
Booksmart captures the angst of a nerdy adolescent with enough poignancy to make any former BT Young Scientist cringe.
Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein)’s adventure is familiar to any high school movie fan. At their school there’s the jocks, drama kids, the nerds and so on.
Our central protagonists fall into the latter category.
The film follows their attempt to experience all they’ve missed out on during their studious school years in one night.
Over the course of an eventful 24 hours, the girls go through the motions, experiencing first crushes, awkward sexual encounters, and the intensity of teenage friendship.
However, Booksmart turns the formulaic high school genre on its head, in a way that feels fresh, relevant and important in 2019.
A ‘new wave’ of teen comedy
The Breakfast Club-style message of ‘we’re not so different, really’ gets told time and time again.
Booksmart, though, does it while incorporating the best elements of recent teen movies like The Edge of Seventeen and Blockers, truly a new wave of teen comedy.
The girls are just as lewd and horny as the boys from Superbad or American Pie, with Feldstein taking the place of her brother Jonah Hill, and a teddy bear standing in for the unfortunate apple pie.
Like Saoirse Ronan’s character in Lady Bird, the girls are witty and politically engaged. Molly has a poster of Michelle Obama on her wall, and a bumper sticker that says ‘still a nasty woman’.
The action, meanwhile, takes place amidst a backdrop of smartphones, Snapchat, a stellar turn from Jesse Williams, and 2019’s coolest soundtrack.
With the character of Amy, it feels as though Wilde asks:
What if Janis Ian from Mean Girls was openly gay, and no one cared? What if she hooked up with Regina George on their graduation night?
In terms of representation, it feels miles ahead of Damien ‘too gay to function’ Leigh, whose sexuality was played mostly for laughs.
Sadly, Booksmart didn’t make the Irish box office top ten during its opening weekend.
Don’t let it totally flop like in the US, go see it while you can.
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