Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Let's be clear: this movie is not the female version of 2007's raucous "Superbad." The two high-school senior girls are not party monsters - they had spent their formative years of high school studying and not much else. The colorfully judgmental Molly (Beanie Feldstein) is the brainiac who has been accepted to Yale and has a crush on fellow student named Nick. Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), Molly's best friend who is far more reserved, is ready to spend time in Botswana for the summer (though she may be there longer), has been accepted to Columbia, and has a crush on a girl named Ryan (Victoria Ruesga) . The two main girls seem like opposites yet they have that special bond that only close friends have, and anytime a dire situation arises, the word "Malala" is uttered (sort of a surrender without question to uphold what the other one wants).
This could have been a single night of wild parties and lots of boozing and making out with the usual stock teen characters and yet "Booksmart" aims to be more sophisticated in its approach. The educated Molly feels like everyone else in school will not get any further in their education and she is shocked to discover that many of them, who have partied, are attending Ivy League schools. Due to that sucker punch to her gut, Molly insists that she and Amy attend a party thrown by Nick (Mason Gooding) where Molly hopes her infatuation will lead somewhere. Discovering they do not know the address to the party, Molly and Amy end up at two different parties, one at an ostentatious cruise ship and another at a murder mystery-type party (the movie's only slow-to-a-dead crawl moment) hosted by their own peers. Once they finally arrive at Nick's party, the surprise is that everyone treats Molly and Amy as cool people who have finally came out of their bookworm shelves. Then there's a moment of truth that rings out in the movie that accentuates silence briefly, as if the two characters who are arguing are using hurtful words that we would rather not hear. The confrontation is between Amy and Molly and, sure, we have seen it before but I was so heartbroken by it that I wanted to tell them, "Hey, hug it out!"The 2019 world of high-school shown in "Booksmart" is alien to me (I am a 1989 high-school graduate) yet the emotions are not, whether they are on the surface or in your face. Feldstein and Dever hold the world of "Booksmart" in their favor - they encompass it, they live in it, they breathe it and they are having a ball (at one point, they become Barbie Dolls during an acid trip). These are not girls who are depressed and are taking medication to deal the dreary hand the world has handed them. Hell, no, and that is thanks to the comical, intelligent screenplay helmed by four writers: Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel and Katie Silberman. These girls would be fun to hang out with and that is the movie's brightest charm. I could have kept watching "Booksmart" and these smart girls, and been involved in their own misadventures and been hooked for another hour.
