If you loved Lady Bird, the coming of age film starring Saoirse Ronan and Beanie Feldstein which scored Greta Gerwig a Best Director nod at last year’s Academy Awards, trust us, you’re going to really love Booksmart.
The teen comedy, which was released in cinemas nationwide yesterday, stars Beanie Feldstein – yes, the best friend in the aforementioned Lady Bird – and Kaitlyn Dever as two high school best friends, who spent their entire teenage years studying to get into an Ivy League college; Molly (Feldstein) has her eyes set on Yale, before she assumes she’ll become America’s youngest Supreme Court Judge and Amy (Dever) plans to do a gap year in Botswana before heading to Columbia.
But on their last day of school, Molly and Amy realise that all the peers who they considered to be dropkicks for partying, drinking and having sex not only passed their exams, but also got into Ivy League universities.
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Due to its hilarious nature the film, which is actress Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, is being dubbed the female version of Superbad, the 2007 film coincidentally starring Feldstein’s older brother, Jonah Hill. In a way that only a women could do, Wilde and screenwriter Katie Silberman perfectly encapsulate the bond women share with their first real best friend and the all-consuming nature of a first crush – Molly, a somewhat surprising choice in Nick the jock and Amy, who is introduced matter-of-factly as a lesbian at the start of the film, on a skateboard riding girl named Ryan.
With Lisa Kudrow starring as Amy’s supportive mother – she assumes that Molly and Amy are dating and at one point that ‘Korean face masks’ are code words for lesbian sex moves – and Wilde’s real-life husband Will Forte as Amy’s dad, plus Jason Sudeikis as the awkward school principal, Booksmart is everything you could hope for when looking to describe growing up as a millennial woman.
Oh, and Feldstein and Dever – who lived together for the duration of filming – are absolutely brilliant.
Seriously, just go and see it.
Booksmart is out in cinemas nationwide now.
