Books­mart

Increas­ing­ly it feels as if we’re liv­ing in the gold­en age of teen movies. For­get The Break­fast Club and cast aside Bring It On: in the past few years alone we’ve been blessed with vital addi­tions to the canon, from The Edge of Sev­en­teen to Block­ers to Eighth Grade. Now comes anoth­er entry to the hall of fame: the effort­less­ly charm­ing direc­to­r­i­al debut from Olivia Wilde.

When Books­mart pre­miered at South by South­west in March, audi­ences were quick to laud it as a female ver­sion of Super­bad (a com­par­i­son made even eas­i­er by the pres­ence of Jon­ah Hill’s lit­tle sis­ter Beanie Feld­stein). Such asso­ci­a­tions are easy to make and prob­a­bly inevitable in a sub­genre as sat­u­rat­ed as the teen movie. Although some of the humour in Super­bad hasn’t aged well, it’s true that both films have some­thing pure at their heart: the beau­ty and intri­ca­cy of ado­les­cent friendship.

While Super­bad had Seth and Evan, Books­mart has Mol­ly (Beanie Feld­stein) and Amy (Kait­lyn Dev­er). The two are in their final few days of senior year at a seem­ing­ly well-to-do Los Ange­les high school, where they’ve spent the past four years court­ing aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess in order to get into good col­leges. For Mol­ly this means a cov­et­ed place at Yale; for Amy, Colum­bia (after she spends a sum­mer in Botswana teach­ing women how to make their own tampons).

They are, for all intents and pur­pos­es, Big Nerds, who treat their less stu­dious class­mates with casu­al dis­dain, but there’s no sense that their aca­d­e­mics have made Mol­ly and Amy out­casts; in fact, their alien­ation from their class­mates is all of their own mak­ing. Hurtling towards grad­u­a­tion, the pair become aware that their rig­or­ous pur­suit of grades has come at the cost of a good time, while all their class­mates have achieved a bal­ance between per­fect SAT scores and hav­ing a life out­side of the class­room. There is, of course, only one thing for it: Mol­ly and Amy need to party.

The night before grad­u­a­tion, they embark on a sim­ple mis­sion: attend the big par­ty thrown by the most pop­u­lar boy in their year, and throw off the shack­les of geek­dom once and for all. It’s a sim­ple enough con­ceit, but Booksmart’s strength lies in its earnest famil­iar­i­ty, and deter­mi­na­tion to prove you don’t have to rein­vent the wheel for a film to work.

As Mol­ly and Amy, Beanie and Kait­lyn have a nat­ur­al, easy chem­istry; we buy into their friend­ship whole­sale, and Feld­stein builds on her stand­out sup­port­ing per­for­mance in Lady Bird to prove she’s becom­ing one of the most excit­ing young actors in Hol­ly­wood today. Even sup­port­ing cast­ing choic­es are pitch-per­fect: Will Forte and Lisa Kudrow are hys­ter­i­cal as Amy’s sup­port­ive par­ents, while Mol­ly and Amy’s class­mates avoid becom­ing high school stereo­types thanks to the absorb­ing ener­gy each actor brings to their sup­port­ing role. Stand­outs have to be Bil­lie Lourd as Gigi, Noah Galvin as George, and Sky­lar Gison­do as Jared.

Of course, there’s no escap­ing the fact Books­mart is about a very nar­row teenage expe­ri­ence, and the white, upper-mid­dle-class lens is, par­tic­u­lar­ly on repeat watch­es, notice­able. The impli­ca­tion of a stu­dent-teacher rela­tion­ship also feels strange­ly pitched in 2019, even though we’re encour­aged to laugh. While this doesn’t pre­vent Books­mart being riotous­ly fun­ny and charm­ing in its sin­cer­i­ty, these flaws are worth keep­ing in mind, par­tic­u­lar­ly when Books­mart does so much so well.

Its fic­tion­al world is one where ath­letes, nerds, bas­ket cas­es, princess­es and crim­i­nals all co-exist peace­ful­ly, and it’s refresh­ing to see a world where teenagers get along with each oth­er for the most part rather than falling out along stereo­typ­i­cal clique par­ty lines. Amy’s sex­u­al­i­ty as a les­bian is also pre­sent­ed as a non-issue (we’re so used to see­ing teenage sex­u­al­i­ty sole­ly shown as only full of tor­ment), and spe­cial men­tion must be giv­en to Books­mart for its open dis­cus­sion of female sex­u­al desire and masturbation.

There aren’t many stu­dio films which take such an enlight­ened view to some­thing which main­stream media still seems to strug­gle to wrap its head around. It’s evi­dent that so much love and thought has gone into Books­mart, from its pro­found sense of empa­thy for each of its char­ac­ters to the care­ful­ly curat­ed sound­track, a hot con­tender for best of the year. Into the fine canon of pool par­ty scenes goes a stand-out in Books­mart, sound­tracked to Per­fume Genius’ ​‘Slip Away’, and the sight of Kait­lyn Dev­er and Noah Galvin belt­ing out ​‘You Ough­ta Know’ sits along­side Cameron Post’s ​‘What’s Up?’ in a new genre of les­bian empowerment.

As Mean Girls was for teenage girls some 15 years ago, Books­mart feels like a water­shed moment for the next gen­er­a­tion. It’s so sure of itself and so full of the bound­less pos­si­bil­i­ty of youth. Whether you’re a teenag­er now or were a long time ago, this film makes you realise how impor­tant those for­ma­tive years and friend­ships are, no mat­ter where you end up.