What Lessons Can We Learn From Booksmart?
The Ambitious High School Comedy Presents A Series Of Teachable Moments On How The Genre Needs To Evolve
art by MikeSapienzaDesigns via Etsy
Tristan Young @talltristan
High school comedies, perhaps more so than most sub genres, are something of a time capsule. They are comprised of a taxonomy of pup cultural zeitgeist at the heights of their relevancy, only to seem antiquated as new trends and memes supplant previous markers. There are occasional offerings that stand the test of time such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but more often the raunchy and riské demeanour of films of this ilk are stricken as unapproachably dated at an alarming rate. Perhaps their reliance on building their narratives around youthful aesthetics, fashions, and mediums makes them more likely to succumb to the punishing cycles of renewal and revision. This process has accelerated markedly in the last 15 years as such culture is increasingly defined by the transient and mercurial nature of evolving social media. Whatever was trendy last year certainly won’t be in the next. High school films and their dependency on this gives them an unenviable shelf life, stifling forward looking potential in obsequiousness to merely appearing to be present in the moment.
Booksmart is the rare kind of movie within this genre not constrained or diminished by such limitations. Ostensibly an updated version of Super Bad, which itself has gone from vanguard of edgy humour to relic of misogynistic ableism within cinema, Booksmart lives up to its name by being the kind of film that brings the whole genre forward and providing a heuristic blue print for where it can go in the future. It’s updated depiction of character tropes and how to naturally chart the evolution of a relationship is as narratively endearing as it’s writing is rigorous. Rather than only indulge merely our basest comedic instincts, which it does do, Booksmart injects dimensions and vision in a sub genre that never really demanded it. It’s a series of teachable moments on and off screen for what to do in the niche sub set of comedy, and maybe even in some cases what not to.
Released in 2019, Booksmart is the directorial debut of Olivia Wilde, who first started as an actor in the mid 2000s and began to operate more and more behind the camera in recent years. The story has an approachable and simple tag line, and yet it affords the plot refreshing and earnestly unique narrative opportunities. Our two leads, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are your traditionally characteristic straight A students who have sacrificed any semblance of social life or even acceptance amongst their high school peers in pursuance of good grades that will get them into good schools. Their plan works with Amy soon to be off to Columbia and Molly to Yale. As the film literary narrates in it’s opening moments, fuck the rest of their classmates, ensconced in frivolous partying, casual cruelty, and general slackerism. Amy and Molly made it, but there’s just one problem- so did everyone else. To Molly’s borderline prodigious shock and horror, every vapid party girl, oafish jock, and juvenile under performer, has one way or another also secured a spot in an ivy league school or one of similar regard.
How the hell did this happen? Molly is incensed by the notion that these churlish brats, so consumed by their superficial high school indulgences in parties, drugs, and sex, could have produced the same post secondary success story she and Amy had. The two of them did it wrong, Molly concludes; she and Amy could have been partying and getting good grades that would secure their future. Fiercely determined to change their narrative, Molly demands she and Amy go to a party and have fun before graduating. Amy, always the beta in their friendship reluctantly acquiesces, under the pretences of what could really go wrong. It turns out a lot. Things go sideways for Amy and Molly in some truly inventive and bizarre ways. Awkward moments abound, drugs are accidently ingested, some mildly felonious behaviour precipitates, people go to jail, and some valuable lessons are learned.
Wilde could have structured and grafted this narrative onto the stylistic and tonal designs of scandalous high school films of past years and decades, but it would have been sorely lacking if she did. Indeed, Booksmart highlights the vacuum of missed opportunists that have persistently held the sub genre back for so long, and in breaking from those norms becomes illustrative of how much more rewarding these kinds of movies can be. While one would be remiss not to delve into the sublime quirkiness of Molly and Amy’s relationship, the most refreshingly atypical aspect of the film is actually the litany of secondary and tertiary characters. In a high school movie it’s so easy to depict these characters as tropes and clichés, that’s literally what they are there for. Nick, the classically rhetorical alpha male popular kid in the vein of Zack Morris. Jared, the insufferably obnoxious rich kid that flaunts his wealth in equal proportions to his utter lack of self-awareness. Triple A, the standoffish girl whose ignominious nick name comes from hooking up with boys in their car, seemingly in perpetuity. Ryan, the sweet but slightly bonkers skater girl seems like a rehash of Polly Shore from Encino Man, but thankfully less catastrophically annoying. Hope, the requisite mean girl, who can communicate solely in sarcasm or mean spirited barbs. The list goes on like this. One could purpose an entire essay purely on the theater bros.
None of these characters are as they seem. None of them are merely the sum of their singular narrative purpose. In the kind of film that often needs an antagonist to overcome, none of them are bad people. Nor are their roles in the film relegated to merely being vectors to inflict frustration or animus on Molly and Amy. By the end of the film you will know and understand these characters on a far more genuine level than you would expect a movie like this to be capable of. While the film seemingly shows Ryan and Nick making out as a scathing betrayal to Amy and Molly who they have respective, sheepish crushes on, no one actually did anything wrong. All Nick and Ryan ever did was be nice to Amy and Molly when they all meet at the party, something our two heroes are arguably undeserving of considering their pretentious disassociation with them and everyone one else for the majority duration of high school. All that happened was an extension of an olive branch of camaraderie and yes a little, very casual flirting; it’s not their fault that Amy and Molly misconstrued that as something more serious. The film goes to very successful lengths of articulating that debilitating heartbreak, as experienced through the still developing and inchoate emotions of a teenager, is not the same thing as profound wrong doing. That Amy and Molly learn this by the end and the film can proceed with no animosity towards Ryan and Nick is very refreshing.
We learn these lessons time and time again throughout Booksmart and it’s always handled with care and intrigue. Jared isn’t just some rich asshole, but a very nervous and damaged person who never learned how to interact with people beyond the transactional relationship he learned from his parents. He can’t present himself as sincere because he never experienced it himself. This is Amy and Molly’s story but the film earnestly wants to see him get there. His friend Gigi, a walking cauldron of medication and psychosis seems initially the wild card character that any film like this needs. Indeed when she’s not jumping off a boat she’s magically resurfacing at unexpected times like a spectral vamp. But in reality she’s a person that puts loyalty to her only friend above anyone’s preliminary idea of her, and that’s admirable. Even Nick’s henchmen like goon friends come off as refreshingly, just fine. They extend their hand of friendship to Molly when she finally, begrudgingly gives them an opportunity to with no ulterior motive or agenda. One could be forgiven for expecting a Carrie-esque conspiracy to be afoot were Booksmart happening in a different genre, but it’s all completely benign.
Molly’s unexpected encounter with Triple A is especially instructive and endearing. Beyond the obstinate personality and sexual posturing, Triple A is just a person like anyone else exploring what it means to be sexually active in high school, like so many others in this movie. So why did she get the derisive nickname when none of the boys did? Why do even the girls call her Triple A? Her character has every right to be depicted as wounded and hurt, not merely a one-dimensional rival to Molly, and Booksmart respects the narrative value in exploring this. And as the film also articulates, she wants to enjoy it too, so sue her? It’s not just that Molly and Triple A- her real name is Annabelle!- leave with a more congenial and respectful understanding of each other, it’s that the film achieves this through the lens and perspective of the secondary character, not Molly. This is Molly and Amy’s story yes, but every character is deserving of their own should the opportunity afford it. Booksmart endeavours to forge those opportunities as often as it can.
Of course it is Amy and Molly that tie all of these interstitial moments into a narrative through line. Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein prove not just more than capable of carrying the story, but just how paramount good casting is. If it seems like these two truly are old friends even from their first scene together, you’re not far off. Prior to filming Wilde suggested the two try living together as roommates to get a senses of each other’s idiosyncrasies. They ended up living together for ten weeks. Their chemistry is integral to why Booksmart works so well. Molly with her ostentatious oration and Amy’s more subdued and reflexive humour makes for some brilliant moments of dialogue or physical acting. Their truncated back and forth about the merits of breaking the rules or dance routines that are analogous to finishing each other’s sentences is wonderful. Even the absence of these expressions yields terrific moments; Amy’s unbearably uncomfortable grimaces and movements while stuck in a car with Jared or later their principle that is also an Uber Driver speaks volumes in it’s nuanced minimalism.
That chemistry, that extra sensory awareness of each other’s impulses is purposed in at times very specific ways to foreshadow and eventually explicitly highlight that even with a best friend, sometimes relationships are hard. A running joke is Amy and Molly’s escalating to the point of redundancy complementing of each other in certain situations. As if motivated to one up each other, their torrent of platitudes scan like a covert challenge to the other one to try being even nicer. When Molly has reservations and insecurities about revealing to Nick that she has feelings for him, Amy is scathingly blunt. “How dare you say that about my best friend!” she barks at her best friend in a fun bout of third person redirecting. In all of these cases it subtly suggests that maybe they aren’t as naturally perfect for each other as their genuflecting may suggest. If such performative bouts of reassurances are routinely necessary then the fundamentals of their friend ship may not be as sound as either would like to admit. Indeed, things come crashing down for both of them when the stresses of high school socialising, of which they are both comically inept, short circuit their fervent loyalty to each other. The resentments of Molly’s authoritative dominance in the relationship and Amy’s secretive introversion quickly comes to a boil.
This schism manifests in truly traumatic ways, as the real time break down of their relationship is literally live streamed by a gawking horde of classmates bearing witness to the meltdown. The scene direction and photography here is uniquely brilliant in the way the loosely rigged camera tracks back and forth between the two like a natural facsimile of tilting your neck back and forth between two litigants. As the audio drains away, supplanted more and more by the spotlights of recording phone cameras, the viewpoint careening between the two ensures that despite the train wreck nature of what we are seeing, we are unable to look away. Even the meagre respite of a cut to a different angle is withheld; we must experience this moment in the same manner as everyone else in the room. Molly’s face sears with ignoble fury as Amy entrenches herself in a miasma of emotions and fears she’s never been able to process. When she tries to all at once she’s not able to control her outbursts. It’s hard to watch, to the two actors’ credit.
It’s not easy to reconcile the very real sense of accomplishment on the entire cast’s part with some of the cinematic legacy shaping the make up said cast. There are a lot of generational actors on screen here. You may not notice it beyond the exaggerated sunglasses, but Billie Lorde, Carrie Fisher’s daughter, plays Gigi. The character Nick is played by Cuba Gooding Jr’s son. Molly Gordon, who plays Annabelle, is the daughter of screenwriter Jessie Nelson and producer Bryan Gordon. Most strikingly is Molly’s Beanie Feldstein who is Jonah Hill’s sister. For a film that wanted to chart a new course and provide updated metrics for how to make this kind of film, its curious that it would want to draw even more comparisons to Super Bad, which helped launch Hill’s career but is seen as increasingly retrograde. Feldstein is terrific in and deserving of her role but it seems like marketing tactics wanted her to give the film connective fibres to the more iconic genre film. It’s natural to be compelled to suspicions of nepotism when the film was in pre production. Hollywood is in desperate need of further reforms when it comes to casting practices. It is vital for proper representation of people of color, women and members of LGBQT community. It’s also important to remember the good old fashion toxicity of legacy casting especially within such a hermetic ecosystem like Hollywood.
If the film raises ethical questions in some of it’s behind the scene practices, one can at least admire its progressive commitment to representing women and the LGBQT community. Super Bad being one of the most prominent modern markers in this genre made a name for itself with plenty of humour that maligns women and gay people. Furthermore, plenty of attendant cinema or really any kind of medium has engaged in often disingenuous performative gesturing about positive body images, often in unconvincing and hackneyed ways. Booksmart largely obviates most of this discourse, rendering it in a position far past such goal posts. The hallucinogenic Barbie doll scene, beyond just being ludicrous, articulates how reductive and objectifying all of the corporate and market based posturing on loving your body and its imperfections is, tacitly normalizing and entrenching certain aspects of one’s self in the realm of an ‘imperfection’. It’s a body, move on who cares? Wanna have long legs and super shiny skin? Great. No interest in engaging in any of that? Still not worth making a big deal out of. Like the satire of Blazing Saddles that showed just how useless and stupid it was to judge someone based on their skin, the scene makes a similar point about body image.
Movies in this field spent decades wallowing in humour offensive to gay people or women. In Booksmart you have a myriad of gay characters represented in different ways. Ryan, who may or may not be gay feels no need to be defined by it either way. Conversely, theatre bros Alan and Tanner lean into their personalities and interest in drag with dramatic aplomb, often themselves being the ones dictating the terms of the humour in certain scenes. There’s still plenty of comedy to be mined from sexual preferences, but the film does so in a manner that doesn’t cast anyone as the subject of ridicule. Rather it engages in sharp wordplay and personalities defined by their autonomous designs. Even when the characters are being straight up mean in the beginning of the film, they rudely mock Molly in terms of her, admittedly prickly demeanour, not anything relating to her looks. Kids can still be so cruel, but Booksmart operates far above the low hanging fruit. With that being, said- yes there are many vagina jokes. It’s different when it’s not coming from a boy.
In one aspect Booksmart seems oddly un-self aware, however. The crux of the inciting action is that not only did Amy and Moly get into an amazing school, nearly everyone did. While it is a creative foundation for a story, it does inspire a fair share of incredulity. How, exactly, did the partiers and slackers and students too preoccupied with drugs and sex get into the likes of Harvard and Stanford? One instances is explained away via sports scholar ship but that’s not really cutting it. Later in the film we see the house party Molly and Amy endeavour to get to be taking place at a veritable palace. That provides a bit of an answer to how these kids are going to these schools. They’re all rich. Insulated and inoculated by there wealth, they are free to indulge in whatever frivolity they please knowing full well they will be affluent enough to buy their way into a high calibre institution. One can get all the great scores they want on the SATs but you still have pay for tuition- a detrimental reality for most students that does not once cross anyone’s mind in this film. It’s infuriating to see the children in the movie wave their privilege around oblivious to pernicious systems they are benefiting form. That the film doesn’t seem to want to interrogate this is problematic.
If this seems like holding a film about kids in school doing dumb things to an unreasonably high standard, rest assured the film sets that standard for itself. Aforementioned gripes aside, this film is elegantly designed and put together, from screenplay to editing. From a perspective that envelopes both the technical and the artistic, Booksmart’s soundtrack is particularly fantastic. Music selection, effective or well meaning though it may be can often date a film in acute terms. Booksmart’s selection of songs that are either timeless or only grow in relevancy largely avoids that issue, making for one of the best soundtracks in recent cinema. Opening early with Lizzo’s Boys, but with Molly and Amy dancing to it, intimates the film’s gender politics in effective manner right from the start. LCD Soundsystem’s Oh Baby playing in the background during one of the films most tender and revelatory moments was a stroke of genius. Most effective of all is the pool scene paired with Perfume Genius’ Slip Away. This was an already rhetorically ambitious scene, depicting the sheer, unrepentant wonder and joy of discovery through the eyes of youth in revolt. The scene quickly transitions into a cacophony of difficult to navigate emotions when confronted with disorienting trauma. The track’s ecstatic glee and vigour that dissolves into a kaleidoscopic array of dissonance is a perfect mirror for that whiplash. The film climaxes’ musically with DJ shadow and Run The Jewels team up Nobody Speak. Blasting that while Molly and Amy rip down the street in a garish Pontiac on the way to graduation moments after getting bailed out of jail and absolutely loving it is perfect. Wilde got started directing working on music videos and that visual & musical acumen vividly comes through in this.
Wilde’s commitment to the project is apparent in nearly every aspect of Booksmart. An avowed activist and politically active progressive, she’s projecting a better version of how these movies can look and feel onto the screen. Is it actually endemic of the current state of tastes and preferences within the realm of the high school comedy? Perhaps not; while the film was a critical darling it’s box office intake was moderate at best. Whether audiences weren’t ready or the studio didn’t have enough faith in the project isn’t necessarily instructive when evaluating Booksmart’s importance. What is important is one day the sub genre will catch up to the film and pick up where it left off. That is, if the filmmakers that follow in Wilde’s footsteps do their homework.