Ali Plumb reviews Booksmart

A real story about real lives that will make many people feel seen on the big screen

Best friends Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are the school nerds: working hard and, well, not playing hard. At all. But all that academic excellence has resulted in them heading off to good universities, which is great – but what isn’t great is how all their so-called “slacker” schoolmates are also going to good universities, despite all the partying, getting drunk and generally having a good time. Realising this on their final day of school, Amy and Molly try to cram several years’ worth of debauchery into just one night… but can they even find the all-important house party to begin with?

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Pros:

• Booksmart has a lot of things going for it, but the fact that it’s funny is probably the key thing to flag here. With so many modern “comedies” failing to actually put all that many jokes in the mix, here comes Booksmart, which manages to not only make you laugh, but do so with real, believable characters in a real, believable situation. Remember: this is about two teenagers trying to get to a party. What helps is that here we have two girls who are besotted with each other, two best friends that love each other’s company in such a way that you, the cinemagoer, fall in love with them immediately. That’s the “gimmick”, if this film has one at all. There are no superpowers, werewolves, undercover police missions or anything like that – okay fine, there are some visual flights of fancy (stop motion dolls, anyone?) and plenty of highly eccentric schoolkids – but ultimately this is a real story about real lives that will make many people feel seen on the big screen, and that’s a wonderful thing.

• I hate to give such a generic compliment, but “All the actors act really well” does apply perfectly here. With a young, inexperienced cast like this one, you might expect things to be a bit rough around the edges, but top to bottom, they’re all excellent. Dever and Feldstein rightly deserve most of the praise – at one point holding the whole film up in a couple of long shots – but they’re all properly brilliant and will no doubt go on to appear on many other great things.

• This film is very well shot. It would be so easy to just pop the camera in front of the actors and let the scenes play out, but Olivia Wilde – in her directorial debut, by the way – gives every scene a sense of cinema, be it at the bottom of a swimming pool or skating down a school corridor powered by a fire extinguisher. What helps is a great soundtrack, featuring such incredible artists as Santigold, Jurassic 5, Lykke Li, LCD Soundsystem… the list goes on. It’s just far better than you might expect, so trust me, just make the effort and find a cinema near you that’s showing it and go treat yourself.

Cons:

• There is a bit of a hipster vibe here, and if that’s not your scene at all, then maybe… maybe check out the trailer and see if it works for you. It is maybe – ironically – a tiny little bit too cool for school, perhaps.
  
  
• I really did enjoy this film, so I’m struggling to find things I dislike about it. Maybe it could have a few more proper belly laughs? Um… it’s not long enough?

• Um… yeah. It’s good. You should watch it.

Three-word review: Funny, loveable, real.