‘Booksmart’ offers a refreshing update to teen movie tropes
Every generation has a their teen movies. In the ‘80s, we had John Hughes’s tales from white suburbia. The ‘90s saw classic literature reimagined with films like Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You as well as teen movie staples like She’s All That, Can’t Hardly Wait, Varsity Blues and the American Pie series. In the 2000s, we had fresher takes like Superbad and Mean Girls which sought to subvert the cliches of teen movies while still appealing to the teen audience. Today, we have Booksmart, which is a welcome next step in teen movie evolution.
Most good teen movies are about a couple of losers trying to get in with the popular crowd—it’s a tale as old as time. Usually theirs efforts will involve increasingly insane scenarios that push them farther apart until they realize that they’re not being true to themselves and that maybe the “loser” friends they already had are, in fact, the best people in the school. Teen movies are about friendships, discovering who you are, and preparing for the next chapter of life, usually college. Booksmart has all that, but in a fresh way that gives ample room for comedy and elevates the genre.
Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are Molly and Amy, two nerdy BFFs who attend a school full of trendy, woke kids in Los Angeles. Molly is the ultimate overachiever and dreams of being the youngest justice on the Supreme Court. Amy is out, awkward and a truly great friend who is always down for whatever Molly aspires to do, though her decision to take a gap year in Africa shows that she’s still trying to find an identity outside of her pushy-but-lovable friend. Both girls are not exactly popular in school, but pride themselves on the fact that they get better grades and will likely have a better futures than their classmates—until they discover that even the cool kids did well on the SATs and got into good colleges. This completely torpedoes their excuse of not having a thriving social life because they were so focused on academics, so they vow to spend their last night as high school students doing all the cool teen activities they never did in the previous four years.
If Superbad and Mean Girls had a baby, but that baby was a woke teen of 2019, it’s this movie—and I mean that in the very best way. Teen movies always age like milk and become problematic almost immediately after they’re released, so a new update feels refreshing and warranted. Gone are the cliche popular kids who outwardly bully nerds. The closest we get to a Regina George is Triple A (Molly Gordon) who doesn’t seek to destroy those less popular than her but is more interested in calling Molly out on her self-righteous superiority, something that does ring true. Likewise, we don’t get the type of homophobic jocks we’d see in those ‘80s teen flicks that make us cringe upon rewatching. In Amy’s case, it’s clear that she doesn’t have a girlfriend not because she’s the only gay kid in school, but because she’s a totally awkward, nerdy teenager who gets incredibly nervous talking to girls she likes. Think about the return to high school scene in 21 Jump Street and amplify it for the social media generation and you have Booksmart, a very welcome revision on teen tropes.
When you have two leads whose friendship feels as real and natural as the one between Feldstein and Dever, it’s no surprise that this movie maintains such a realistic feel at its core, even as Molly and Amy get into increasingly crazy circumstances. The girls feel like real BFFs rather than actors playing BFFs, so it’s easy to get onboard with their journey. It feels like Superbad for 2019—kind of perfect because Feldstein’s brother is Jonah Hill. While Molly’s character is entirely different from Seth from Superbad, Feldstein’s quick, smart-ass delivery evokes Hill at his finest.
Booksmart marks the directorial debut of Olivia Wilde, who managed to deliver one of the most hilarious movies of the year on her very first try. There’s something to be said about women directing stories about teenage girls that lends authenticity to the film. We see dudes writing and directing films about teenage boys trying to get laid all the time, but the female characters in those teen comedies are usually little more than an object of desire for our horny protagonists. Wilde and writers Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel and Katie Silberman have given us the female version of those classic teen comedies, but for today’s audiences.
