Booksmart

In the past, female-centered teen movies have been hyperfocused on the emotional side of adolescence and have shied away from the realistic, nitty-gritty and downright embarrassing taboos of growing up. Torching those conventions with wit to spare, Booksmart radically posits that girls are actually just as entertaining, indelicate, unfiltered and sexually charged as boys. The nerve!

Actress Olivia Wilde’s fearless directorial debut stars Beanie Feldstein (Lady Bird) and Kaitlyn Dever (Short Term 12) as Molly and Amy, two deeply nerdy best friends who’ve spent the entirety of their high school years nose-deep in their studies and haven’t looked up long enough to have an actual social life. Then, on the eve of graduation, they realize in one particularly brutal bathroom scene that the “irresponsible people who partied” also were accepted to good colleges. In turn, the epiphany that they’ve wrongfully sacrificed a significant part of their social experience in hopes of Ivy League greatness prompts them to play catch-up over the course of one debaucherous, celebratory night.

This premise, with its seemingly broad raunchy high-school-comedy appeal, manages to feel both timeless and timely, tapping into the pressure and joy of being young and the subsequent exhilaration that comes with acting out. The film follows that limitless feeling of allowing oneself to make mistakes amid an increasingly stringent, hypervigilant world, blending the painfully adolescent fear of missing out with the universal anxiety of knowing you don’t know anything. And it subverts the all-consuming Generation Z narrative of “getting it all right on the first try” in a way that feels cathartic and exciting.

The film accompanies Molly and Amy along a string of rebellious adventures, including a ridiculously over-the-top house party and an equally agonizing poorly attended boat party, plus an ill-timed public pornography viewing, an accidental drug trip, a failed bathroom hookup and one heroic entanglement with law enforcement. Categorizing Booksmart as “the female Superbad” may initially feel valid as they both work within a similarly fast-paced, crass, LA high school party night-gone-awry plot. However, the comparisons diverge in their intentionality and execution.

Booksmart feels brainy, funny and heartfelt in a way that Superbad doesn’t fully explore. It features teenagers who are rounded out beyond the scope of traditional adolescent tropes — they’re bright, quirky, unapologetically ambitious and insecure, abrasive and, at times, downright selfish. They’re also messy and deeply judgmental, but these are not presented as defining character condemnations — they’re simply part of who the young women are becoming and part of their experience of growing up.

As such, Booksmart strikes the perfect blend of Blockers’ brazen gross-out humor, Easy A’s progressive wit, Lady Bird’s nuanced emotional piques and the filthy female friendship dynamic of “Broad City,” all in one rapid-fire, defiant swoop. Directed, written by and starring women, Booksmart’s gaze also feels particularly (albeit not exclusively) female.

Some of the film’s most poignant sentiments shine through in the scenes in which Molly and Amy verbally assault each other with compliments: “Who allowed you to be this beautiful?” “Who allowed you to take my breath away?” “How dare you say that about my best friend!” They invoke the names of their feminist icons — including Michelle Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony and Malala Yousafzai — in an effort to muster courage within themselves on their quest for self-expression. They’re constantly critiquing gender roles and societal expectations without being inauthentic. They’re sex-positive feminists who love each other and hate the patriarchy, but they also want to turn up.

In fact, nearly all of the characters in Booksmart portray a new kind of personal agency that younger audiences have long been yearning for: one that’s strong but flawed, insecure yet relatable and equal parts hyperaware and still figuring it out. The film is bold, pithy and insightful without being precious and treats a myriad of “PC culture” issues like consent, queerness, gender performance, sexual orientation and misogyny with a unique brand of intentionally brash nuance. It’s not preachy or overly didactic, but simply the reality of the times. It’s 2019: You can be whoever you want and love whomever you want — just don’t be a heartless snob about it.

Relying on a supremely talented supporting cast, Wilde showcases fresh on-screen talent with fantastically entertaining portrayals from Billie Catherine Lourd’s hippy chic Gigi, Skyler Gisondo’s sweetly absurd “Fuk Boi” Jared and Molly Gordon’s sexually liberated, smart-as-a-whip burnout, Triple A. They hold their own against an exasperated principal who thinks he’s a chill Lyft driver (Jason Sudeikis), a hot young teacher (Jessica Williams) whose relationship with her students is blurry at best and the oblivious yet lovable parental duo of Lisa Kudrow and Will Forte.

I would also be remiss not to mention the insanely fun soundtrack, which becomes so integral to the varying mood swings of the film that it serves as a palpable supporting character, coloring each scene seamlessly and provocatively. It coaxes audience interest into anticipating which song is next: Will it be more bops from Lizzo? How about a perfectly timed growing pains anthem from Cautious Clay or LCD Soundsystem? What is this “Money” song and why haven’t I slowly bounced my shoulders to it before? Wait, is that Anderson .Paak, Rhye, Perfume Genius and Alanis Morissette in one 20-minute span? Do I detect a blip of Run the Jewels? Be still, my varied musical heart!]

Weaving all of the above together with charm and wisdom beyond its adolescent years, Booksmart is the kind of film that quite literally says “I see you” by its end — and you believe it. Whether you’re a fiercely loyal party chick, a freaky theater geek or a sexually-fluid skater girl, you have a voice and you are heard. I fully expect Booksmart to become a generational anthem for the droves of funny, weird, secretly foul-mouthed smart girls (and boys) out there — myself included. It’s about time we had a movie with heart, smarts and humor, encouraging us all to get out of our heads and let our freak flags fly.