Get (Book)smart
A PSa for why millennials who have not seen it yet need to.
Booksmart is a coming of age film about two bookworm girlfriends who find themselves enlightened about what lies underneath all their classmates’ book covers. A little corny? I agree, but honestly there’s no better way to describe it.
Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) celebrate their last days of high school before going off to their dream schools, Yale and Columbia. They embark on a journey to wrap up their high school loose ends, i.e. discussing next year’s treasury budget and similar matters…normal senior stuff. The Type A duo is heavily involved in school activities but opt out of socializing with people outside of their lunch table for two.
Booksmart started the female-centric summer movie playlist with a bang (and lots of praise). The screenplay is entirely female-written and boasts producers like Will Ferrell and Megan Ellison. A Hollywood powerhouse for comedy…and boundary breaking.
Booksmart is comical, bookworm-version of a girls gone wild story in the classiest way possible.
Booksmart’s scenes are laced with femininity and humor about the girls’ intense drive to succeed in getting into their dream universities and achieving the rest of their bullet-journal planned and perfected futures. The movie also touches on high school sexuality, FOMO, and the label-istic culture that high school society can create. The diversity presented in the students’ lives and perspectives made the movie feel more collected and natural – it’s a real high school scene with a bunch of kids exploring themselves, not Hollywood glitz and glam.
Booksmart is honestly a film I wish I could have seen before leaving high school and starting college. It light-heartedly opens up discussion about the negative, harsh aspects of high school while showcasing the pressures of getting into top notch colleges and simultaneously “having it all.” One of the biggest pressures I faced in high school was the drive to seem like I had my shit together all the time. Newsflash: I didn’t…and I can bet that neither do most of the people standing next to you in high school or college.
Booksmart also deals with finding balance in life. Amy and Molly are two well-meaning but totally oblivious high school students who ultimately find out that their “all work and no play” motto is not meant for them. They also realized that it is true -- you can’t judge a book by its cover. Instead, Molly and Amy learned that they have to read between the lines to understand the complexity of each individual they used to read as one dimensional. Although Booksmart is considered a comedy, the conversations stemming from the scenes of the movie aren’t all that comical.
I also keenly appreciated Booksmart’s discussion of labeling, and how the words people toss around in high school can affect how we view each other and ourselves. So many people leave high school wanting to shed the labels or assumed identities their classmates curated for them over the 4…6…however many years they grew up with them. Just think for a moment - how much of your identity was assumed by your peers?
The answer is probably a lot.
Beyond the deep personal relatability of the problems Amy and Molly face, Booksmart is a must-see simply because of Dever and Feldstein’s amazing chemistry together. They are unbelievably convincing at portraying the ups and downs childhood best friends battle with when moving away to different colleges – the friction, sadness, confusion, and all the other little things that get thrown at us at the tail end of high school and through periods of intense change. I was reminded of all the times that I felt that sandpaper rubbing against my world. The movie really hit home.
Ultimately, the film kept me laughing while also slyly pulling at my post-college-freshman heart strings. If you haven’t seen Booksmart yet, you should (in theaters or otherwise!). And for anyone who immediately bee lines it for the exit after a movie, leave a few minutes for Booksmart’s credit line. You won’t regret it.
By: Harper Wayne
BU Student, self-published author, and an enthusiastic thrifter with a soft spot for rainy days