Pitch perfect for real life party portrayal
Revolutionary film could change teen movies forever
When I was growing up teen movies were all about douchebag boys scheming about losing their virginity, bagging the hottest babe in school or “fixing” the “ugly girl”, and bitchy girls fighting over said boys.
That’s why Hollywood’s latest foray into the teen movie genre is such a breath of fresh air. Booksmart has just been released and feels almost guaranteed to reach the cult status of the likes of Superbad, American Pie and Napoleon Dynamite.
The film follows whip-smart and incredibly charismatic besties Molly Davidson (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy Antsler (Kaitlyn Dever) as they finish
high school and, recognising their last chance for teen debauchery, undertake an epic mission to attend their first — and last — high school party.
Unlike a good 95 per cent of teen movies I grew up with which were led by dudebros, this one is not only female-led, but actually feminist — and not in the way that it shoves a message down your throat with zero subtlety, but in that it is empowering simply by existing.
For the first time in my entire memory I got to see teen girls who obsess over education rather than boys or image, who actively build
each other up with almost aggressive compliment battles, whose arguments attack actions and choices rather than looks, who never dwell on their insecurities and whose sisterhood pact invokes the name of women’s education activist Malala Yousafzai.
These girls are self-aware, confident and woke as hell, but they’re also just . . . normal.
We’ve all seen the type-A, overachieving Molly Davidson character before, but instead of being a one-dimensional stereotype, here she is also sex positive, a bit of a bully and a secret party animal.
Meanwhile, Amy is the almost-toocool-for-school, would-be loner (if not for Molly) who is exploring her sexuality for the first time with an almost too-enthusiastic support system and the complete confidence to be out and making moves.
Unlike most teen films these girls aren’t chasing boys, the main relationship focus is their friendship as they learn to accept and support each other as they head into the unknown.
And unlike films like Ghost World, these two aren’t loners raging against social norms, they’re trying to fit in without changing to fit the mould — one of them is even student council president.
There’s no angst or drama or heartbreak, these are just teens being teens in a 2019 setting where bullying, slut-shaming, nerd-shaming and underachieving simply isn’t cool anymore.
This is the kind of movie I want the young people in my life to see and learn from — to learn about friendship, compromise, self-care, empowerment and, of course, the idea that you can still have fun and do well in school and be a good person. Who knew, eh?
The film has been consistently compared to Judd Apatow’s cult favourite Superbad, in which a group of boys embark on a mission to lose their virginity before graduation.
It’s easy to see why; in both films the teens are working to a deadline of debauchery and what should be straight-forward adventures go wildly off-course in the most unexpected and hilarious ways. But what Booksmart has over Superbad is, fittingly, smarts. Where Superbad is largely sex, drugs and alcohol-focused, Booksmart, while about going to a party, is more about the journey to get there than the actual partying.
Yes, it’s a teen movie about partying but, unlike all the other teen movies about partying, it’s not about getting laid or lit. It’s every bit as much an emotional coming of age story as films like Lady Bird, just way more accessible — and with way more laughs.
It proves you can have a high school party movie without all the gratuitous depravity, and you can have a coming of age story without getting too deep or pretentious.
Kind of like . . . real life.
These girls are selfaware, confident and woke as hell, but they’re also just . . . normal.