Booksmart

[osprey_archer]

Back when Booksmart first came out, I had friends who raved about it - RAVED. One friend from high school, who I only rarely hear from, emerged from radio silence to tell me that I HAD to go see it.

And now I've finally seen it, and... I don't super get the hype? Probably part of the problem is that I did go into it super hyped, fully expecting an experience at once transcendent and hilarious, and instead it was just fine.

Another part of the problem was that I fundamentally didn't buy the premise of the movie: that moment when Molly discovers that the classmates whom she has always considered loser slackers are, in fact, all going to Ivy League colleges. Just like Molly and her best friend Amy, who kept their noses to the grindstone all through high school! Molly, appalled, decides that she and Amy have to go to a party that very night, right before graduation, so that they too can claim to have both studied and partied in high school.

It just seemed so out of touch with reality to me. At my (very academic) high school, not only did the slackers not get into the Ivy League; most of the nose-to-the-grindstone nerds (a.k.a. my social circle) didn't get in either. What kind of bizarro world do Molly and Amy live in that half of their high school is going to Columbia and Yale?

Well, actually, I can answer this: they live in the bizarro world of the very very rich. One of their high school friends throws a catered graduation party on a yacht; another throws a murder mystery themed dinner in his mansion; yet another throws an enormous party in his aunt's mansion, as his aunt happens to be away on vacation.

And yes, probably the bevy of Ivy League acceptances is just meant as shorthand to show that these supposedly non-academic slackers are actually just as smart as Amy and Molly. I've just lost patience with using "attending an Ivy League school!" as shorthand for "worthwhile person," and I found it especially galling in a movie that is otherwise so self-consciously woke.

Another way that my expectations led me astray (and this on is all one me) I had gotten from somewhere the impression that Molly and Amy were going to get together at the end, and they do not. The movie itself doesn't really do anything to lead you to believe this is going to happen; it was entirely my own expectations misleading me.

Comments

[kore]

WHUT. I heard there was canon F/F in this! Something about a sex scene in a bathroom?

[osprey_archer]

Oh, that def. happens (and that tidbit is probably what led me to believe the leads would get together) it's just not Molly and Amy. It's Amy + a secondary character.

[kore]

Well, boo.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'm p. sure someone said something about "representation," and that's totally accurate, but I drew all the wrong conclusions from it.

[skygiants]

I had had this strongly recommended to me as well, so when my mother suggested we watch it with her as a family viewing experience over one of the recent holiday visits (Rosh Hashanah, I think), I said sure!

That was, as you can imagine, a mistake.

[osprey_archer]

Did the bathroom sex scene make everyone extremely uncomfortable? I feel like that would be a VERY uncomfortable scene to view with family.

I also felt really embarrassed for the yacht boy during the yacht party with no guests, because he chartered an ENTIRE YACHT and no one showed up. Stuff of nightmares.

[skygiants]

There were MANY scenes that made everyone extremely uncomfortable in that setting, the bathroom sex scene not the least of them. (My poor mom was like "I don't understand, I thought she thought that girl was mean!") I find it hard to judge how I would have enjoyed it in another setting because as it was I spent the whole film just cringing silently backwards into the sofa...

[asakiyume]

Wow, yeah. Ivy-league school as shorthand for worthwhile person? Ah, no. Though from your description it sounds like, if we wanted to read subversion where probably there isn't any, we could say that the film was showing that the rich can buy their way into those schools, heh.

[osprey_archer]

I don't think that's intentional - at least, if it was meant to be intentional, they did a bad job showing it. It just felt like a weird blind spot that this movie is showing all these super rich kids and it just... doesn't seem to notice that this may not be representative of the way that 99% of the population lives? Especially given that it is playing into what one might call the woke aesthetic in other ways - and I think that may have contributed to those rapturous reviews: "Finally a movie where the characters talk like us and care about the things we care about!"

[genarti]

God, SAME. Although, as skygiants says, we saw it with her entire family at Rosh Hashanah, which was... an extra layer of Oh God Why, as it turned out.

But I also fundamentally did not buy the premise of the movie either. For one thing, I totally agree about the whole Ivy League shorthand (and I did believe that many of them were going to Ivy League schools, on account of how they were clearly super rich, but not that it said much about their intelligence). For another thing, I did not understand the drive to go partying, which... meant I didn't buy the basic driver of the plot. And for a third thing, Molly and Amy's friendship was so unhealthy during the movie! Like, maybe it was healthy at other times, but the movie was full of Molly stomping all over Amy's boundaries and stated desires, and then that sort of broke wide open, but also yay pancakes at the end...??? (WHY WEREN'T HER PARENTS THE ONES DRIVING HER TO THE AIRPORT? "Because this is not a movie that cares about parents," said skygiants, accurately, but it still frustrated me as a person who does care about parents and parent-child relationships, since Amy's parents are shown to be kind and supportive in their 1.5 scenes of screen time.)

I hadn't really heard of it before we watched it, but heard some friends talking about how they loved it afterward, and I'm glad they did but I do not personally grok why. We had very different high school experiences, maybe, I guess? I was, admittedly, the kind of nerd who absolutely would have stayed in with a book and my parents the night before graduation, and in fact did.

[osprey_archer]

I bought that Molly really did want to go to a party, but Amy clearly did not, except maybe the movie wanted us to believe she did deep down inside because movies always seem to assume that everyone loves parties? There seems to be an assumption in Hollywood that everyone who stays home to study is actually a poseur who secretly wants to party like everyone else. When actually most of the people who would plan to watch a Ken Burns documentary on graduation night are in fact making that choice because they find it more enjoyable.

The fact that Amy's parents didn't drive her to the airport bugged me too. Like, yes, I absolutely get wanting the last scene in the movie to focus on the most important relationship in the movie, but then maybe... they should have chosen a different scene? Molly and Amy's Last Pancake Breakfast before Amy's parents drive her to the airport, or whatever. It just seemed so bizarre that her parents wouldn't be there for this big milestone moment.

I feel this sometimes in workplace dramas too, where there's a non-work scene - Character X is having a baby! or whatever - and X's workplace buddies are the only people attending this huge moment in her life. No family? No friends outside of work? I realize that it's because the creators are focusing on the characters that the viewers care about, but it still feels weird.

[genarti]

Oh, yeah, sorry, I was unclear; I do believe that Molly really wanted to! I don't understand WHY, so I didn't find that at all relatable when I think the movie was very certain I would, but I believe that she did. But Amy clearly did not, and said so many times, and neither Molly nor the filmmakers seemed to believe that this was a valid preference or that she wouldn't be better off, in some unclear way, for the experience.

I totally agree, about the workplace dramas! Etc. It happens in books, too, where I totally understand that the underlying reason is probably that the author didn't want to juggle a bunch more characters who weren't relevant to the plot, but it's still disconcerting when somebody seems to have no friends/family/neighbors/coworkers except our plot-relevant handful, and it's not a characterization point about them being isolated or whatever.

[osprey_archer]

Sometimes it ends up making moments that are supposed to be heartwarming actually rather sad, like, these characters have no one in their lives who care about them except their work friends. Surely there could at least be a throwaway line about "Oh yeah, Mom and Dad dropped off some chicken soup," or whatever? No juggling of new characters required! Just a quick line to let us know that Jill has some social support who aren't her coworkers!

[anelith]

Wow this sounds like a movie I would hate too. Thanks for saving me from wasting my time!

[osprey_archer]

I'm baffled that so many people recommended it to me so highly. Maybe it's just funnier if you see it in a movie theater rather than at home or something.