Booksmart (2019) Film
Molly: How are we going to find out where the party is?
Amy: By doing what we do best. M*therf*cking homework.
Let’s just go ahead and get it out of the way: Booksmart is the valedictorian of teen movies since the year 2000. There are other great contenders. There are plenty of teen movies that are generally solid and have special things about them, but one had to be the best, and here it is.
Molly and Amy (Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) are your classic high school over-achievers ready to graduate and move on. They spent all four years buckling down and studying instead of partying, and they’re perfectly happy with that… until Molly finds out that everyone else they know also got into terrific colleges (or got offers from Google) while going to parties, drinking, and having relationships. So they give themselves one night to achieve the complete high school experience.
It’s terrific. It’s a whirlwind of bad decisions as two type-A nutjobs pour all their manic focus into trying to relax. Boat parties, theater-kid parties, and actual parties ensue. You can’t go more than three minutes without laughing.
For a lot of people, I think a mark of a great teen movie is realism. I don’t know if that’s a fair metric. Most of real high school life isn’t that interesting. Fiction lets you turn up the volume on the parts of reality you want to see: hilarity, drama, and learning valuable lessons. Booksmart, by and large, isn’t realistic, because it’s more fun than real life, but when it does get “real,” it nails those moments, too: the fear of life after high school, the sudden camaraderie you feel when you’re about to leave a group of people you’ve known for a long time, and a very serious (and fair) fight with a best friend.
Even despite that genuine turbulence in their friendship, Molly and Amy’s friendship is just so genuine and charming. Any time one of them sees the other in a new outfit, they drop everything to smother their friend in compliments (eg. “who allowed you to take my breath away?”). It never feels old, or like they’re going through the motions. It’s dorky and wholesome, and one of my favorite running gags in a teen movie. I’ve also got a lot of love for Jared (played by Skyler Gisondo, also on The Righteous Gemstones), who despite being an absurdly rich try-hard is a delightful human being and must be protected at all costs.
5 pancakes out of 5. It’s on Hulu, go watch it.