by Chris Feil
Booksmart feels like a gift from the comedy gods - it’s firmly built in the teen buddy comedy traditions yet with its own unique diversions, representationally rewarding without the condescension of pandering, and a gaspingly funny look at female friendship that is also authentically moving. An impressive first feature from actress Olivia Wilde, Booksmart is joyous and it is here to fucking own the summer movie season.
Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein star as Amy and Molly, two best friends who prioritized their studies all throughout high school in the hopes of landing in the elite colleges of their dreams. On the eve of graduation, they shockingly discover that all the hard-partying kids also managed to nail their SATs and get accepted into top schools despite appearances. In a comically foiled and app-assisted evening, the two young women try to make up for lost time by finding a way into the most epic pre-graduation party.
For all of the ways you might expect Amy and Molly’s night to go awry, Booksmart delights in still delivering the stylistically unexpected in its very familiar formula. As indebted to the likes of Suberbad that this film is, Wilde infuses it with more fantasy than reality to convey a youthful emotional truth. The hedonism of their peers is captured with gonzo lunacy, a first experience with drugs snaps the film into a Robot Chicken-esque animated sequence, poolside longing is wrought with intuitive visual lyricism. Wilde has crafted a subtly bold debut, approaching the film with a level of experimentation that is both exciting and well-attuned to her young subjects.
Aside from the smart ways that the film captures the way teens navigate the in-person and online spheres in 2019, Booksmart is painstakingly detailed in its authenticity detailing the relationship between Amy and Molly. While summer plans and micro-resentments threaten their unity just like we’ve seen from other teen films, their connection is stacked with enough non-secrets and emotional support to feel true to life to degrees that other lesser films should envy. The result is something that makes us care for them both as people and as a singular unit - part of Booksmart’s wisdom is how it acknowledges such a bond as something outside of ourselves to be nurtured.
Much of this is indebted to the brilliant pairing of Dever and Feldstein. Dever’s Amy pines for the cool skater chick, but Dever wisely doesn’t overplay her nerves or awkwardness as Amy discovers her confidence. She is charged with the wider character arc but charts Amy’s growth with organic subtlety, understated but refreshingly real. Feldstein is more than her vocal opposite, she instead turns Molly’s boldness into a demonstrative show of filling the gaps of assuredness left by Amy’s hesitation. Her performance finds Molly to act out of goading support rather than pushiness, hilariously offering her own unworldliness to make Amy feel seen.
Their performances are symbiotic and complementary, the kind of cinematic twosome we want to see cast opposite eachother again and again. It's part of what makes Booksmart one of the smartest depictions of friendship in a genre full of them.
But there is even more comic brilliance on display in the film’s wondrous ensemble, most notably in the sheer anarchy of Billie Lourd’s performance. Playing rich weirdo Gigi, Lourd’s performance is like a glitterbomb set piece and a geniusly destabilizing force - even her peripheral bits throughout are the stuff to send the audience into perplexed sustained giggle fits. Elsewhere Jessica Williams, Jason Sudeikis, Skyler Gisondo, and Noah Galvin texture Booksmart with warmth and wit.
Booksmart is so winningly and inventively composed that you barely need notice the ways it is familiar. But what sinks deepest, and transcends the rest of the plentiful cynicism currently filling multiplexes, is its deep well of genuine emotion that it taps into (and also snaps out of) at all of the right moments.
Grade: B+