Why you should watch Booksmart

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I'm not exactly the target audience when it comes to highschool comedies. I abhor American Pie, Road Trip, 10 Things I Hate About You and these kinds of movies, and the fact that I'm referencing the late 1990s should tell you everything you need to know. That's basically the last time I watched those. Even back then, as a horny teenager, I didn't get the appeal of this genre.

So, I was more than surprised when I got a glowing recommendation for Booksmart, which is a highschool comedy, by a source I really trust on these issues. I watched it twice, more or less back to back, and today, I'm standing here telling you why you really should watch Booksmart.

To give you a quick synopsis: It's the last day of school before the graduation ceremony. Our main characters are the two nerdy, overachieving girls from class that most of their classmates don't really hate, but they also don't overly much engage with them. Molly, the leader of the duo, is highschool president and tries to get her vice president, the quintessential jock, to help her work out the budget, while he couldn't care less, whereas her bestie Amy is unsure whether she should make a move on a girl she likes; since her coming out two years prior, she didn't act on it.

With that setup complete, Molly has to learn that despite her class mates slacking off and partying, they're also getting into the prestigious universities that make up America's Ivy League. Devastated, she realizes that she missed out and drafts Amy to basically make up for years of lost parties in one long, final, crazy night.

So, that's the basic hook.

Why should you watch it? For one, there's the humor, which is just great. The movie flows with an incredible energy, and the humor is a big part of it. I can't really describe it that well, but they're tying everything together, cross referencing and weaving the plots into each other, easily moving from the surreal to the mundane and back again, all the while using the exaggeration of it all to make points.

And what points they are! This is a movie that actually has to say things. You have a host of female characters, all of them interesting, neither of them flawless, neither of them being a stereotype. You also have a lot of interesting male characters. None of all these characters is going to shape out the way you expected it when the movie started, not even the main characters. I guess my main point is that there are many, many characters, and all of them are great, and you'll love every single one by the time the movie is over.

And that leads to the biggest surprise I had with it. While in the beginning, it seems like they will be following the usual stereotypical roles for this genre, around the middle section of the movie, everything takes quite unexpected turns. I don't want to spoil the details, but the important aspect of it is that in the end, the class of 2019 are good people. The kids are alright, basically.

Denying themselves the easy way out, the writers actually thought these characters through. And while we and the main characters, Amy and Molly, assume that they will fit the assigned stereotypes when we first meet them, this is essentially us sharing Amy's and Molly's central weakness: Not seeing their classmates for what they really are, but taking a superficial image - one they themselves display, of course, which complicates the question of guilt here - and then never trying to dig deeper.

The others are guilty of this as well, of course, as they just assume Amy and Molly are sticklers and cannot ever be fun, without ever bothering to find out whether this is actually true. This way, on their very last day, the class of 2019 has the bittersweet triumph of getting to know each other really well and developing a deep appreciation for each other - only to depart from each other, not to see each other again for likely forever.

This distills the best part of the highschool experience in a comedy, instead of just aiming for the lowest common denominator and riff on the first sex, jocks and nerds and dumb teachers. It also has meaningful things to say about what it's like to be a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, how incredibly precious this phase is and how fast it's over.

The movie takes the emotions, the feelings, the worldviews of these people seriously. We as an adult audience can laugh at the pomposity of them declaring their need to find out certain things, but it rings true that highschool is a phase that's unique and can't be repeated, ever again. Usually, the "we try things out" stuff is reserved for thinking about college, with highschool being relegated more to the awkward, but here, it's taken seriously. It demands a watch, and it rewards you highly for it. The only other movie that I know that comes close to achieving something like this is Eighth Grade, and that's a serious drama. See these two as complimentary and that statement as high praise, given the quality of said drama.

Go watch Booksmart. If you already did, watch it again.