Movie takes audiences to ‘Eighth Grade’

single dad, but that’s OK. The movie, which is full of laughout-loud scenes of kids trying to act like adults and adults trying to act chill, is especially amusing when it comes to the bumbling efforts of Mark, who loves his daughter unconditionally — even when she’s tuning him out with her ear buds or compulsively checking her phone during dinner.

Burnham made his name as an amateur comedian on YouTube, which makes it both surprising but somehow appropriate that “Eighth Grade” is so astute about the pleasures and dangers of social media. Burnham is clearly conflicted about the emotional effects of the constant comparisons, competitions and invidious voyeurism young people are subjecting themselves to nearly all day long. And he gets the subjective experience right. When Kayla is flicking through Instagram or making one of her videos, the camera comes in close, the music swelling. We’re inside her head, the pitiless world outside has ceased to exist and we’re as relieved as she is.In many ways, “Eighth Grade” isn’t a coming-of-age story but a study in the tyranny of influence and social panic (Burnham reportedly suffers from anxiety himself). But it’s also a compassionate and sneakily effective portrait of its antidote. As painful as Kayla’s isolation is, as cringe-y as it is when she’s rejected, she’s never truly abandoned in a film that ultimately rejects dwelling on cruelty, choosing instead to reward the character and the audience with moments of genuine kindness, and finally pulling the lens all the way back to remind us that “Eighth Grade,” like the rite of passage it chronicles, is merely a moment in time.

Kayla might be lonely and miserable, but she’s far from hopeless: As an avatar for selfhood — not as a fixed point or a performative act, but as a state of constant becoming — she’s already on the move. And she’s a thing of sheer beauty.