Booksmart (2019)

This coming-of-age teen comedy romp may be implausible and full of holes but it's still a pretty good time and often funny. It's the night before high school graduation—the whole night, actually, so in a way director Olivia Wilde and the four screenwriters are courting American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused. But it's quite a bit more loopy and surprising than either of those movies. Molly (Beanie Feldstein) realizes that she and her best friend Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) have spent all their time at high school with their noses to the grindstone to make the grade to get into good schools. They never had fun like the rest of the kids, on whom they generally look with bemused disdain. But, in turn, they know they are only regarded by them as good-girl drudges and they feel they deserve better. The night follows, with the general aim of finding a party at Nick's aunt's place, wherever that is. Feldstein and Dever have a lot of chemistry and they are going to make this movie work no matter what it takes or what the script tells them they have to do. Molly and Amy have elaborate, weird, and hilarious affirmation rituals they go through when they meet or just before challenges. They are smart, sensitive, geeky, charming, and funny when their inhibitions drop, but high school social pressures being what they are they only rarely drop. There are wonderful characters here. A poor little rich boy, Jared (Skyler Gisondo), who kept reminding me of Jackie Chan. His mysterious sister, or cousin (or something), Gigi (Billie Lourd), who is literally everywhere Molly and Amy go, before they get there, even though they leave her behind in worse condition every time. An encouraging teacher, Mrs. Fine (Jessica Williams), who is. A high school principal (Jason Sudeikis) who drives for Lyft in his spare time. Amy's parents (Lisa Kudrow and Will Forte) are cloyingly adorable liberal (I think) Christians who accept that their daughter is a lesbian, and even support it, thinking she is involved with Molly. She isn't. There's also a serial killer who tries to talk sense to them. Early in the evening, on Jared's yacht, when Gigi doses them with some exotic drug they become Barbie dolls for a sequence and undergo other strange changes before regrouping and moving on to the next stop on the way to the party. Of course there are tender moments—it's a milestone of life, after all, high school graduation. But this movie is mostly a lot of laughs with the soundtrack turned up loud. Good stuff all around.