Gosh I loved this film!
Booksmart is an American coming-of-age comedy starring Beanie Feldstein as Molly and Kaitlyn Dever as her bestie Amy. They are both completely charming! (You might recall me raving about Beanie for her performance in Lady Bird.)
Molly and Amy are about to graduate high school when they realise they’ve been too busy studying to have any fun (whereas their fellow students have done both - this reveal is clever) so they want to make up for lost time by having one big night. The night is full of fun and funny ups and downs as you might expect but it’s not predictable, it’s just a pleasure to watch.
One of the things I love about this film is that it represents diversity in all sorts of ways; ways that are familiar in our day-to-day lives but have been mysteriously absent on big screens for too long. For example, Molly is larger than most women in Hollywood movies and Amy is gay but neither of these are laboured plot points, they just are what they are and the story forges ahead regardless. It’s actually pretty sad how refreshing that is.
This four star review in The Guardian which describes Booksmart as wild, warm, funny and filthy is worth a read if you want to know more about the film. I concur with 4 stars.
Booksmart also stars Lisa Kudrow and Jason Sudeikis in small but crowd-pleasing roles and it’s directed by actor/director Olivia Wilde. It opens 11 July and is rated MA 15+.