BOOKSMART WON ON ITS OWN TERMS
It’s 2019’s best comedy — who cares about the box office, says Empire’s Alex Godfrey
BOOKSMART, OLIVIA WILDE’S
debut about two high-school geeks on a fun-mission, is a brilliant film. Its release, though, has stirred almost as many emotions as the thing itself. “Anyone out there saving Booksmart for another day, consider making that day TODAY,” tweeted Wilde shortly after opening weekend last month. “We are getting creamed by the big dogs out there and need your support.” Regular and celeb fans duly rallied around.
Booksmart made $8.7 million in the US that weekend, which has split box-office analysts. It’s an indie comedy with still fairly new actors and was up against genre titans, including Aladdin,
and franchise veterans like John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum, Avengers: Endgame and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu still going well.
Still, the blame game hit quickly, with fans, haters, pundits and critics all wading in. Not for the first time, Booksmart was compared to Superbad,
another high-school geek film, which scored a $33 million opening weekend in 2007. Comparing the two, though, is futile; the entire box-office landscape has drastically changed since. Viewing habits were different then, and streaming services were in their infancy. “The commercial environment for a teen comedy is different now,” says Charles Gant, features editor at trade publication
Screen International. “Netflix is [now] owning the teen space with the likes of
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
There was never going to be an immediately huge haul for Booksmart, and besides, the opening weekend isn’t always a sure-fire signifier, adds Gant: “As the box-office trajectories of The Greatest Showman and Bohemian Rhapsody demonstrate, I just don’t think you can confidently predict what the word-of-mouth hits are going to be.”
However it fares, the response to
Booksmart’s opening numbers speak to how immediately beloved it is with those who have seen it. Profit stats come and go. Great films live forever.