Film Views “Booksmart”

The advanced press on “Booksmart” was strong. Critics were raving about a new teen comedy that put at the center two girls who worked hard in high school, did a bunch of extracurricular activities, took probably way too many AP courses, and never seemed to take time out for fun with their fellow classmates — until the last night of their senior year. Played with great comic timing by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, the two leads play best friends Molly and Amy. Their idea of “fun” on their last day of their senior year is to make sure the budget for the next year’s class is a-okay — something their school principal would rather not deal with. When Molly and Amy interact with their fellow students, the stresses, strains, and awkwardness aren’t hidden. Molly and Amy know they are going to top-flight schools (Yale and Columbia), and they’re pretty sure that no one else is.

To their surprise, they find out that many (if not most) of the people they never liked in high school (mostly because they had a social life and Molly and Amy didn’t) have gotten into ivy league or ivy league compatible schools. How could that be? Only a smattering of details are given to the audience (high SAT scores, or someone being a genius at coding), but the point of this revelation is to push Molly and Amy away from the comfort of their world and into unknown territory: the high school party. Both girls seem to come from middle to lower middle-class roots. Molly, who is the senior class president and valedictorian, lives in an apartment complex, and Amy lives in a solidly middle-class home. Everyone else seems to come from money, and so there’s some class resentment going on. Molly is livid at the realization that all her hard work wasn’t all that remarkable when she compares herself with her classmates she generally loathes.

Trying to make the teen comedy novel after decades of movies that came before “Booksmart” was undoubtedly daunting to the writers. However, screenwriters Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman add a few flourishes of freshness to the genre. One is that Amy is an out lesbian — and it’s not a big deal, except for a crush. There’s some very frank talk about masturbation that’s pretty funny, a hilarious karaoke performance by a theater diva of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” and an awkward, if not accidental sex scene between Amy and an unlikely female partner. Otherwise, “Booksmart” is kind of by the numbers for a teen comedy. There’s drinking, drugs, vomiting, sex, house parties, run-ins with cops, and even the obligatory slow-motion reckless car ride with mouths agape — and no consequences to driving like an idiot.

While I enjoyed “Booksmart,” it felt a little too predictable for something that was billed as somewhat groundbreaking. To me, “Lady Bird” was groundbreaking in the way it treated someone who was truly an outlier. Molly and Amy are outliers, too. However, they make a choice to experience all the things that outliers tend to stay away from. I get it that that’s the point of the film, but at times both Molly and Amy become almost caricatures of book smart girls. Rarely, do they exhibit their unique intelligence, and when they do, it’s not books that give them the information they seek (which is a party they weren’t invited to), but watching clips of the party on their phones to look for clues of the location. That hardly exemplifies book smarts. Rather, it made them look a little silly — especially after we see a montage of them pouring over maps and books in the library. Now, if they used their logical reasoning to locate the party they wanted to go to by finding the right friend connections on social media, that would have been more believable.

Sometimes people will ask if a movie is “worth” seeing in a theater, or if should they wait to stream it. With “Booksmart” I think streaming it is probably worth it in the end. The film was an enjoyable, escapist ride, but perhaps it’s something that would be enjoyed in at home, with friends, and homemade popcorn.