Taglines: Getting straight A’s. Giving zero F’s.
The film starts with best friends Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) meeting up and heading to their last day at school. Both were straight A students throughout their whole high school career, and some of their classmates look down on them for being so nerdy. Even Principal Brown (Jason Sudeikis) would rather do anything else than to talk to Molly, who is class president. They do, however, have a friend in their teacher, Ms. Fine (Jessica Williams), who gives the girls her phone number if they ever need anything.
During lunch, Amy observes a girl she has a crush on named Ryan (Victoria Ruesga). Molly encourages Amy to go talk to her, but when she does, she says something awkward and walks away bashfully. In the unisex bathroom, Molly overhears classmates Theo (Eduardo Franco), Tanner (Nico Haraga), and Triple A (Molly Gordon) talking trash about her. She steps out of the stall and asserts with confidence that she will have a bright future since she is going to Yale, while Amy is going to spend a summer abroad in Botswana to help the women of that region make tampons. It turns out Triple A also got into Yale, in spite of her promiscuous reputation.
Tanner also got into a good school, and Theo, who was held back a few years, was recruited to work for Google. Molly starts to lose her mind, and she goes around asking the other party-happy kids what schools they got into, like Georgetown and Harvard. After school, Amy notices Molly is pissed, and she vents that she can’t believe that their hard-partying peers got into the same good schools they did while they spent their time in high school only hitting the books. They know another student named Nick (Mason Gooding) is throwing a party that evening at his aunt’s house before graduation the next day, and Molly wants to go so that they can say they had fun while they were in school. Although reluctant, Amy agrees to join her friend.
The girls put on outfits and tell Amy’s parents (Lisa Kudrow and Will Forte) that they are sleeping over at Amy’s. After they leave the house, they call their wealthy classmate Jared (Skyler Gisondo) for a Lyft ride to the party. He instead takes them to a party on a yacht that he threw, which he claims to be better than Nick’s party, but nobody is there except for the staff and their loony classmate Gigi (Billie Lourd).
She gives the girls strawberries and invites them to party with her. While Molly tries to find a way to get to Nick’s, Amy goes to the deck to talk to Gigi, who is smoking a joint. After being told by a staff member that she can’t smoke, Gigi goes crazy and breaks a bottle before trying to jump off the ship with both girls, but only she ends up jumping in the water. Molly tells Jared that he shouldn’t try to buy peoples’ affection, and they call for another ride after she gets the address for a party from another classmate named Alan (Austin Crute).
Booksmart is a 2019 American coming-of-age comedy film directed by Olivia Wilde (in her feature directorial debut), from a screenplay by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, and Katie Silberman. It stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as two graduating high school girls who set out to finally break the rules and party on their last day of classes; Jessica Williams, Will Forte, Lisa Kudrow, and Jason Sudeikis also star. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay executive produced the film through Gloria Sanchez Productions.
The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 10, 2019, and was theatrically released by United Artists Releasing in the United States on May 24, 2019, to acclaim from critics and grossed over $24 million. For her performance, Feldstein was nominated for Best Actress – Comedy or Musical at the 77th Golden Globe Awards.
Film Review for Booksmart
During the first act of SXSW crowd-pleaser Booksmart there’s a fantastically humbling, game-changer of a moment for Molly (Beanie Feldstein), a smart if smug overachiever desperately tying up administrative loose ends on her last day of high school. She’s in a toilet cubicle, correcting the spelling of some graffiti when she overhears three of the cool kids dissecting and critiquing her try-hard personality, unaware she is listening in. Molly storms out and delivers a withering comeback, predicting a near future that will see her excelling at an Ivy League school while they struggle to enter the workforce.
In another film this would be a moment of triumph, a victimised bookworm standing up to mean-spirited bullies, but instead, we see Molly’s snobbish assumptions upended as her aggressors detail post-graduation plans just as impressive as hers. It’s a nasty shock to the system, a reveal that puts her entire perspective on school on its head, a realisation that in fact it was possible to both work hard and play hard, her teenage years now seeming like a wasteland of early nights and rejected party invites. The silver lining is that she didn’t spend this time alone, instead developing a co-dependent friendship with Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and with this new, earth-shaking knowledge, the pair agree to put their last night of school to good use, finally embracing the recklessness they’ve spent their lives trying to avoid.
At last year’s SXSW, critics heralded the Judd Apatow-produced Blockers as a rare, raunchy teen comedy from a female perspective but for me, the film’s insistence on prioritising the girls’ starrier parents, two of whom were male, sullied what could have felt like something unique. In Booksmart, the directorial debut of actor Olivia Wilde, there’s no such reversal, the two leads appearing in every scene, parents and male characters be damned.
It shouldn’t feel this refreshing in 2019 to see two teenage girls talk about sex so freely, and awkwardly, but there’s a raw, untempered quality to the dialogue that feels quietly revolutionary. This is also reinforced by the film’s comfortability with Amy’s queerness, a rare mainstream portrayal of a young lesbian coming to terms with her burgeoning sexuality, as revelatory and as confusing as the journey faced by her straight peers, just as it should be portrayed.
The barebones of the plot conjure up inevitable comparisons to Superbad and there are sequences that will feel familiar to anyone well-versed in high school comedies, but Wilde manages to grace her film with a distinctive aura all of its own. For one, romance and sex are relatively low down on the list for the girls while friendship, feminism and the pursuit of fun are of more importance, turning them from archetypes into fully fleshed, and flawed, young women.
Like many first-time film-makers, Wilde is often tempted by stylistic excess but unlike so many others, she avoids an overload of visual indulgence, instead casually peppering her film with memorable flourishes, carefully metered. In one particularly impressive scene, together with cinematographer Jason McCormick she shows an argument in one take, the camera gliding from left to right, with onlookers filming on their phones, an indelible way to convey a familiar scene.
The script, from Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel and Katie Silberman, has a loose shagginess that might take us on a recognisable route, but it’s one with unexpected detours, a fun, freewheeling ride that is mostly on point. While there are big laughs, there are also some comedic extravagances that don’t work so well, such as a rather misjudged performance from Billie Lourd, but the pace is fast enough that the rocky parts become easy to forget.
eldstein, whose turn in Lady Bird deserved more credit, possesses an instant likability but also an ability to embrace her character’s spikier qualities. There’s an easy, hard-to-fake chemistry between her and an understated, soulful Dever, whose quietly naturalistic performance pegs her as a thrilling new talent, set to graduate from her previous, smaller roles into major stardom.
Booksmart is inclusive and progressive without feeling forced and announces Wilde, an actor who hasn’t always found her groove on screen, as a major director, one of the more impressive behind-the-camera transitions I have seen for a while. Her film reaches the audience-friendly highs of a studio comedy while retaining an indie sensibility, both in its visuals and its tone, and coupled with the script’s rooted awareness of the moment we’re now in, it feels fresh, a film that will be rewatched and quoted, held on a pedestal by those who understand its necessity.
Booksmart (2019)
Directed by: Olivia Wilde
Starring: Kaitlyn Dever, Jason Sudeikis, Lisa Kudrow, Billie Lourd, Molly Gordon, Skyler Gisondo, Beanie Feldstein, Diana Silvers, Jessica Williams, Michael Patrick O’Brien, Stephanie Styles
Screenplay by: Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern
Production Design by: Katie Byron
Cinematography by: Jason McCormick
Film Editing by: Jamie Gross
Costume Design by: April Napier
Set Decoration by: Rachael Ferrara
Art Direction by: Erika Toth
Music by: Dan Nakamura
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content and language throughout, drug use and drinking – all involving teens.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: May 24, 2019
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