Wilson makes honor roll in otherwise OK comedy
“Senior Year” tells the story of a teenage girl who slips into a coma and wakes up 20 years later, which means her body is 37 but her brain is still 17. Rebel Wilson plays the girl in her older incarnation, and she is up for the dual demands of the role — the comic absurdity of an adult woman with a teenager’s concerns, and the poignancy of waking up to find that 20 years of one’s life have disappeared.
But the role itself has limits. The paradox of this new Netflix comedy is that what keeps the audience watching is the compelling nature of the premise. Yet, built into the design of the movie is that it can’t be serious about that premise. It has to remain a very light comedy.
One idea that could have been explored is the question of whether there’s something inherent in being physically 37 that would alter a 17-yearold’s perceptions. Would it make a person more serious? Or attracted to other 37-yearolds? Would the person gradually start acting like they’re 37? If so, how would the shift come about, and why?
That would have been interesting, but the movie comes up with other things that are almost as good. It sets up a
surprisingly compelling quest for young Stephanie (Angourie Rice), who starts off her high school career as a nobody. She has an Australian accent and a sick mother but overcomes awkwardness and personal tragedy to become the most popular girl in school. As the story begins, she is only one month away from prom, where she hopes to fulfill her ultimate ambition to become prom queen.
It’s a curious thing about
movies. You could be completely uninterested in everything to do with proms and prom queens, but if the story is well told, and if the protagonist really wants it, you will end up rooting for her to become prom queen. That’s what happens here — but then disaster strikes in the form of an unfortunate cheerleading accident, and Stephanie enters her coma years.
Actually, there’s something odd regarding that accident.
The movie makes it fairly clear that it results from something intentionally done by an archrival, which makes it practically an attempted murder. Yet the rest of the movie never addresses the issue. The sense one gets is of something left over from an older version of the script, a sour note that should have been cut altogether.
When the movie leaps forward to 2022, much of the comedy contrasts the cultural changes of the past 20 years, with the screenwriters getting in some amusing social commentary on the softness of Gen Z. For instance, when she returns to high school, Stephanie finds that there is no cheerleading captain because all the cheerleaders are captains. There’s also no prom king or queen, because these are hierarchical entities that could damage other students’ self-esteem.
“Senior Year” is a just-OK movie, but it’s a very good Rebel Wilson movie, in that she has been funny in supporting roles, but this is the first time she has excelled as the name above the title.
She is nicely supported by Sam Richardson, who plays the adult version of the boy who loved her from afar. Richardson’s reactions — he’s one of the better comic straight men since Bud Abbott — always make his costars funnier.