Screenshot: Annapurna
Booksmart starts off with two senior girls, Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Devers), who are getting close to graduating from high school. They’ve worked so hard, and they’ve been such close friends since the day they met—they do everything together. But once it’s the last day of school, Molly finds out that students who haven’t worked as hard but instead had fun, got into great colleges as well! She starts to panic and tells Amy they have to do something so fun and amazing before they graduate…. Molly and Amy are going to a party! That is where the story begins to unravel and crazy and weird things start to happen.
Spoilers ahead.
This movie was absolutely fantastic, well drawn out, and so funny. There are several hilarious scenes that blow your mind. Molly and Amy actually go to tons of parties and they try things that they’ve never done before, and then start to hallucinate or freak out. Also, they get into this big fight towards the end of the movie but make up, which is very common for all friendships, and I definitely connected to that one scene. When Amy and Molly first try on outfits for the parties, they pick out the most dorkiest outfits ever and then start hyping each other up, which I found amusing. Then when they meet up with their favorite teacher, Mrs. Fine, she gives them these dapper and sparkly outfits, which are way better than what they had on. One of my favorite scenes is at the very end: Molly has just gotten Amy out of jail and they start speeding like hell to their graduation because, they’re late and they are not following any of the rules while driving. Once they get to graduation, they drive right through a fence. Every teenage driver speeds like hell no matter what; it is so fun and that scene is extremely accurate because of the speeding.
Now, the plot of the movie was absolutely amazing. Everything about it was either so connecting, accurate, or amusing. I think anyone who has seen the movie can agree with me when I say, there was never a dull moment. All of the scenes included funny actions that the students did or what Molly and Amy were “discovering.” At one point they’re so desperate for a ride to this one particular party that they sneak into this random pizza guys car and try to make him drive them to the party. They make themselves look like robbers or bad guys and try to scare him, but the pizza guy just says that he could be a rapist or a killer or a robber himself to try and get them out of this car, and so Amy and Molly finally get out of the car. What’s funny about that scene is that when you’re young, you are told to never go into a stranger’s car but, they totally ignored that one rule and snuck into a stranger’s car with no worries.
As for the characters in the movie, although they seemed realistic and pretty accurate to teens, some of their actions were completely different to what actual teens do. On their last day of school, they trash everything up—at my school, that stuff cannot happen, and the students are a bit more well-behaved than what you see in the movie. Yes, there are some class clowns or kiss-ups or weirdos, but none of them actually try to flirt with their teacher or write on the bathroom stalls or throw really big parties with almost the whole class there. A lot of movies that try to connect with teenagers make high school seem better than it actually is. They make it seem like it’s fun all the time, as if it’s High School Musical. What’s true about these characters is that they do go through real life traumas or problems with friends that hurt them, and the way they try fixing it sometimes is by smoking or drinking or doing something they’ve never done before. They also do get into fights with their closest friends, but they always make up in the end. The characters in the movie are a bit different, and high school is not as fun as it looks, but the movie overall is very accurate to what goes on in the life of a teenager.A lot of movies that try to connect with teenagers make high school seem better than it actually is, they make it seem like it’s fun all the time, as if it’s High School Musical.
I think in the very beginning of the movie, not much was happening, and it seemed pretty boring. But it gets extremely interesting. You get to watch these teenagers do the craziest things before graduation, and you get to understand who they are even more. When the cops show up at the last party that Molly and Amy go to, Amy distracts the cops and lets everyone else get out safe, and that’s why she ends up in jail for a bit. Molly starts walking on the side of the road because she couldn’t find Amy and she just wants to get back home. While she’s walking, a driver starts slowing down and it turns out to be Triple A!! Triple A is basically portrayed as this “slutty” girl who doesn’t try hard in school and gets with guys on the side of the road who need help. When Molly gets in the car, Triple A explains to her what really happens, and that she actually does help her friends who get stuck on the side of the road. She admits what she’s done, but she doesn’t like being called “Triple A,” and she really is smart and she got into the same college as Molly. Once Molly hears all these things about Triple A, her opinion of her changes and she accepts her and becomes her friend. They start talking more and are now excited to go to college together. In high school, you may think that these inappropriate or “slutty” girls are nothing compared to you, that they don’t go through the same stuff as you and that you are better than them, but you guys are actually the same. You both go through similar problems, especially girl problems, and in the end you should accept them for who they are and not go with a rumor you’ve heard. A lot of rumors do go around in high school which can seriously hurt the main target. It happens, and that scene in the movie is accurate to real-life teens as well.
Booksmart was overall an outstanding and very classic teenage movie. Though the movie portrays high school as if it is fun all the time—you don’t stress that much, you can do whatever you want, and you have fancy courtyards to eat in for lunch—it’s not all that. Again, this movie gives the idea of high school in almost the same way that High School Musical did. It is not bad that it is portrayed this way, and it honestly makes the movie even more interesting. If it were a true high school movie, no one would wanna see it because high school gets pretty boring. Booksmart was an incredible movie. I think everyone should see it because it is the perfect movie to watch if you wanna laugh a whole lot and be worry free. I would 100 percent see it again and again.
Madeline Baer, 16 years old, lives in New Jersey, goes to Cherry Hill High School East, loves cats and movies.