A radically inspired, hyper-fresh, and even slightly overcooked take on the high school teen comedy— a dynamite, stylish mash-up of “Superbad” and John Hughes for “Lady Bird” overachievers and “Eighth Grade” keeners — actress Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” is something just shy of a sensational masterpiece and miracle, a coming of age classic for the Thank U, Next Generation. Rolling with Santigold ride-or-die swagger and relentless bad bitch energy, Wilde crushes her directorial debut with self-assured confidence to the point that you’ll believe filmmaking may be her true calling in life. That said, there’s just so much going on in this maximalist super directed movie. This superdope collision of emotional sincerity, banger-only jams, and cinematic bliss, is slightly too perfect and slick for its own good; a kind of A24 on-brand generator horny to be impossibly cool, but feels slightly exhausting at times (miraculously, it’s not being released by A24, but Annpurna’s United Artists Releasing label, but you’d be excused if you made this mistake). Granted, it’s not as inauthentic as that sounds and it’s sweet, funny and au courant— a crossbreed hybrid of everything that’s cool right now mashed with all your favorite addictive apps— but sometimes you wish this almost perfect movie would just relax just slightly.
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Operating in a similar space to Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade”— exploring awkward excruciation and finding empathy, but more polished and featuring nonstop Run The Jewels and turnt af Spotify jams or whatever—“Booksmart” centers on two lifelong high school besties, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein from “Lady Bird,” who is spectacular); hyper wunderkinds who have spent a lifetime invested in being uncool in order to prosper academically and get into the best colleges. Bossy and insufferable (and the high school president who will deliver the commencement speech, naturally), with dreams of being the next Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Molly’s world, however, is violently flipped over when she discovers that many of the stoner losers and slutbags (male and female, of course), have also been accepted to Harvard, Standford, and some of the best schools in the country (cue scene employing the omg dolly-zoom from “Jaws”). Suddenly, realizing it was possible to have it both ways in high school—have fun, and actual friends, and still succeed— the girls try to cram 4 years of fun into one night on the last day of high school. Thus sets the stage for a “Project X”-esque party quest movie to find the kewl kids party they haven’t been invited to because well, they’re kind of nerdy, ass-kissing outsiders. No one actually likes the brownnosing-for-points Molly, and the far less overbearing Amy, is something more of a timid shut-in, with a mad crush on a skate girl that no one notices and no one thinks to invite because she’s never seen outside of school.
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Hilarity, hijinks, and insanity ensues with a terrific supporting cast of terrific and hysterical high school kids—too many to name, but Billie Lourd steals every scene she’s in as Gigi and Molly Gordon shines as the promiscuous and unfortunately-named Triple A thanks to her reputation-precedes-her blowjob prowess (and the movie has some great things to say about sex positivism, slut-shaming, gender, sexuality, etc.). Jessica Williams, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, and to a lesser extent, Jason Sudeikis, are all wonderful as the satellite-ing teacher and parental figure characters of the movie.
Much of “Booksmart” is in the vein of the find-the-party odyssey and travelogue replete with false starts, bad breaks, crazy detours (the theater hags in-character costume party), but at its best, and most authentic, it’s a squad girls friendship movie that also gets into the nitty-gritty of where this amazing, but complicated relationship is unhealthy and co-dependent and it’s time for these girls to find their own way not so attached-to-the-hip. Perhaps one half is the zaniness of “Superbad” et al, and the other, something more heartfelt and unaffected like “Lady Bird” and one wishes it leaned just a tad more in the Greta Gerwig direction and less buddy cop comedy for teen girls. Credited to far too many writers, Katie Silberman, Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, and Susanna Fogel, “Booksmart” is wicked clever, exciting, dynamic, and fortunately doesn’t feel written by committee, but perhaps all these cooks is why the movie has the nagging sensation of being slightly overwrought and forced (one Molly-spiked scene that goes into stop-motion animation to convey the insanity of drugs is just too much, for example). “Booksmart” is the type of movie that possesses the best, most dreamy music montage of the year (great score by Dan The Automator on top of the best soundtrack of the year, but also cool it a bit) that will visually fucking floor you; and yet it also contains two too many music montages as well. Still, it’s so superfresh—arguably what we should call this uber lit genre that mashes social media sensibilities with pop culture—it’s only a minor knock.
Working up to her debut, Wilde has directed a lot of music videos and commercials and it shows; “Booksmart” is slick and polished and almost too perfect, but at the same time, holy shit is this a bold and energetic movie that’s going to absolutely murder audiences with its intense vitality. It’s also refreshing to see a movie where the lead character (Dever) is gay, but it’s treated so normal and so not a thing, it’s almost not worth mentioning.
Every generation needs a new anthem and upgraded insta-classic, and by and large, Olivia Wilde has done that with her exhilarating debut that is going to absolutely destroy and dazzle Millennials, Gen Z, and any cool girls who spent more time in libraries and doing their homework and quietly playing Tetris and Bubble Bobble than paying attention to all the fuck bois of their teenage years (some of whom they detested and secretly pined for and “Booksmart” does a wonderful job of expressing that complex female emotional intelligence). If you saw “Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse”—which felt like it was made in 2031—and thought you’ve seen the future of animation and superheroes, “Booksmart” almost achieves the same for the teen high school comedy and nearly revolutionizes the genre with the quippy, pomo-memey vibe, while still holding on to the nostalgia and formula that make those “Breakfast Club”-like movies still feel like classics. If there are quibbles along the way, throttling into its last act in high gear, “Booksmart” ends perfectly, hitting on all cylinders, with a terrific mix of poignant emotion and evocative teen vibrancy, perhaps revealing itself to be—as much as raucous teen comedy as it wants to be— a wistful valedictory to the bffs that defined your halcyon days and a winning tribute to the best years of your life. [B+]
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