BOOKSMART (15)
★★★★ ★
SCHOOL’S out for the summer but life lessons never end in the raucous rites-ofpassage comedy Booksmart.
Actress Olivia Wilde struts confidently down the same corridors of teen angst as Clueless and Mean Girls in her feature film directorial debut.
Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and best friend Molly (Beanie Feldstein) have studiously forsaken fornication and
partying in order to achieve their academic dreams.
As graduation looms, Amy is destined for Columbia while Molly has been accepted into Yale. The gal pals despair at the tomfoolery of classmates so they are gob-smacked to learn that lazy peers have secured places at coveted Ivy League institutions too.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow: Amy and Molly have needlessly missed out on extra-curricular lessons in drunken bonding.
The over-achievers resolve to make amends and hatch a hare-brained scheme to gatecrash a party thrown by cool kid Nick (Mason Gooding) in the hope that Amy can finally approach her crush: skateboarding tomboy Ryan (Victoria Ruesga).
This haphazard odyssey puts Amy and Molly on a collision course with narcotics, crime, an explosion of bodily fluids and a shocking discovery about their high school principal (Jason Sudeikis).
Booksmart is an unapologetically forthright and tender valentine to the glorious final hours of carefree abandon before adulthood comes a-knocking.