Booksmart

Two nerds decide to join their fellow students who they've avoided their entire school going life for one final night of debauchery before they part ways and head off on their post high school life. Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are great fun in Superba...........err, no, hold tough for a minute. I can't be talking about Superbad. That was 12 years ago. I'm actually talking about Booksmart, a film a lot of people are calling a female take on Superbad. It's superficially similar alright but where that film had crudity by the bucketload this one has heart instead.

And some crudity.

Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are two teenage girls on the verge of escaping from the hellpit that is a U.S. high school. Molly is on her way to Harvard and Amy is heading to Botswana for some volunteering. To get to where they've wanted to be in life they've given up a lot and Molly realises her and Amy need to experience some fun to loosen themselves up before real life beckons. Using Amy's crush on another girl called Ryan as an excuse, Molly decides they need to take in one big student party but now their problem is actually finding one. Chaos ensues.

Booksmart is after riding in on a huge wave of hype. Everyone is gushing about it and that does tend to make a person wary because very few films ever live up to that kind of talk. For the first third of Booksmart i assumed this was going to be the case again but then a bad trip during a mystery party (all will become clear as you watch) and the ensuing shuffle made me laugh so much that everything just clicked into place and gradually Booksmart became my comedy of the year so far. It's flat out hilarious in places and manages to do it in a forward thinking way that never gets in the way of the laughs. It's inclusive and it's progressive but it's never once smug or "look at me" about it. The people in it just are what they are and that's just lovely.

The best comedies are the ones that give you someone to give a shit about. Without that characters are just vehicles for punchlines. Booksmart gives us Amy and Molly. Two leads who feel like real people. We all know someone like them, some of us are like them and most of us have experienced the type of friendship they have. That closeness that feels almost toxic meaning when it goes south it goes south fast. There's an argument in the latter half of the film that feels almost as violent as a fist fight and it's horrible to watch. It's here you realise how invested in the film you are and that's down to some excellent work from Beanie Feldstein (so good in Lady Bird) and Kaitlyn Dever. It's brilliant when movie pals feel like real pals. Their little in-jokes, silly dances and conversations about teddy wanking and mistaken orifices (again, all will become clear). They're a pair you just want to spend time with. Adventures aside I'd have happily listened to them talk nonsense for the whole film. 

It's not just them though. The lovingly drawn background characters, all clearly defined, each with their own probles, all add to the stew. Teenage life is hard. Some have it figured out but most don't, and most struggle with it all. First time director Olivia Wilde captures that struggle to find yourself perfectly and does it in such a confident way that it's hard to believe this is her debut movie. Things that spring to mind - an exhilarating jump into a pool, a bizarre sojourn in a pizza delivery car that pays off perfectly late in the film and a one take argument that kills a party in it's tracks. All this and it manages to make an extremely overplayed Alanis Morrisette song seem fresh and exciting again. Score. The only weak link is the continued jamming in of a character played by Billie Lourd aka Carrie Fisher jr. In an already packed film she's one character too far and she adds nothing. To paraphrase another great teenage film, Mean Girls, she's like fetch - "stop trying to make her happen."

I really really liked this. It's a film people will go back to again and again. It's rhythms of teenage life feel genuine and manage to shake life back into hoary tropes that felt ancient years ago. You'll laugh at pretentious pronunciations of Spanish cities, you'll squirm at the sound of vigorous and pornographic pleasuring and you'll get dust in your eyes at awkward goodbyes. Best of all you won't want it to be over. That's a rare thing with a movie.