Booksmart (2019)
About This Movie
Two academically overachieving best friends realize on the eve of graduation that the classmates they spent four years looking down on also got into great colleges while somehow managing to have fun, and they set out to cram four years of partying into one chaotic night. Olivia Wilde's debut is a raunchy, big-hearted comedy that celebrates female friendship with the same affection that Superbad brought to male friendship. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever have chemistry so natural that you believe they have been best friends since childhood.
Why It's a Classic
The film arrived as a conscious update to the teen comedy genre, centering two young women who are smart, ambitious, and sexually confident without any of those qualities being treated as unusual or threatening. Feldstein and Dever create characters who are specific and fully formed rather than types, and their friendship carries the emotional weight of the film with a sincerity that never feels forced. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent, with Billie Lourd's Gigi and Skyler Gisondo's Jared stealing scenes through sheer comic commitment. The film also integrates its characters' queerness into the story without making it the plot, a casual inclusiveness that reflected its audience's reality and set a new standard for teen comedies going forward.
Fun Fact
Olivia Wilde prepared for her directorial debut by studying every teen comedy she could find, creating a massive spreadsheet analyzing what worked and what didn't in films from Sixteen Candles to Mean Girls. The underwater sequence was filmed in a single take in a pool, with both actresses holding their breath for the duration, and the scene required over 20 attempts to get right.
Parent Note
The film contains strong language throughout, teen drinking and drug use, sexual humor and references, a brief animated fantasy sequence with sexual content, and frank discussion of sexual orientation. The humor is raunchy in the tradition of R-rated teen comedies. The film's positive messages about friendship, ambition, and self-acceptance give the crude humor a warm context. Well-suited for older teens.
Quick Facts
- Year
- 2019
- Type
- 🎬 Movie
- Category
- Coming of Age
- Age Group
- Teens (Ages 14–17)