Booksmart

At first glance, Booksmart appears to be yet another teen coming-of-age, high-school-comedy. Best friends Amy (played by Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are two overachievers who studied hard to achieve their dreams of attending good colleges. And it works: Molly is attending Yale, and Amy Columbia. But on their last day of high school, Molly makes the galling discovery that her peers, who she has long perceived as not all that smart and studious, party hard throughout high school, also got accepted into good colleges. 

Molly and Amy thought they had to choose between good marks and wild parties, but it turns out they could’ve done both! With this in mind, Molly decides that she and Amy have to go to a party the night before graduation, and not just any party — The Party — a graduation party held by popular classmate Nick (Mason Gooding). This is the basic premise of Booksmart.

And this being a high school comedy means that the stakes are unusually high. Amy, for one, just doesn’t care about going to a stupid party as much as Molly does. And Molly has something to prove, for reasons which become clear throughout the film, and which tighten an already tight through-line. Neither of them know where Nick’s aunt lives, which makes it difficult for them to get to The Party in the first place. So begins a near-improbable wild goose chase, which is more charming than it has any right to be.

Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is delightful, warm, and, although it retreads familiar teen comedy tropes, Wilde has an unusually empathetic eye for her whole cast of characters. The wider ensemble cast beyond Molly and Amy do a remarkable job of fleshing out what could have easily been thin and cliché-informed characters.

In this movie everybody is as exhilarated and scared about the end of high school as the next person. Which is to say that everybody’s about on the same team. There are no queen bees or jocks or nerds (unless you count Amy and Molly); there are no sex pacts or bets, and, best of all, in the hands of female screenwriters and a female director, there’s no snivelling male misogyny or underhandedness at the behest of its women.

The two young women are the film’s core, and all they want is to go to a party and have a good time, and maybe shake out of their comfort zone a little bit. That’s relatable teenage girl catharsis. And yeah, maybe they wanna hook up with their crushes too, but at the end of the day, that’s not what the movie is about. (Although Amy being gay makes her party hook-up groundbreaking, and unlike anything you’ve seen in a mainstream teen high school comedy before). It’s about two friends pushing each other towards growth and a deeper understanding of each other and the wider world, and the film is better for it once they actually do start to grow up. And that’s all in the span of one night!

Not only that, but Booksmart is genuinely funny, and is buoyed continuously by the charm and chemistry of Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, who perfectly adore each other as all female-best-friends should. A recurring gag is the two of them aggressively complimenting each other’s outfits (“you take my breath away,” Molly staggers out at one point) and another high note is Amy slapping some sense into Molly after an uncharacteristic burst of self-doubt (“you don’t talk about my best friend that way!”). 

Booksmart is a film that film that, frankly, deserves all the hype it can get. Go see it, and then go see it again. And don’t forget to bring your friends. This is a film that will make you remember why you love them.

Booksmart
In cinemas now