Booksmart

Last night I went to see Booksmart because the trailers made me laugh out loud!  I absolutely loved it because, not only is it funny and heartwarming, but I saw a lot of myself when I was in high school in the character of Molly.  We meet two best friends, Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), as they are about to graduate from high school the next day.  They are the valedictorian and salutatorian, respectively, and have spent all of their time in high school studying to ensure that they get into Yale and Columbia, respectively.  They are quite pretentious and rather disdainful of their fellow classmates.  They think of them as players (Mason Gooding), mean girls (Diana Silvers), jocks (Nico Hiraga), sluts (Molly Gordon), rich kids (Skyler Gisondo), theatre nerds (Noah Galvin and Austin Crute), druggies (Billie Lourd), and losers (Eduardo Franco).  When Molly hears a group of students making fun of her in the bathroom, she brags to them about being accepted to Yale and that she will eventually have a much better life than them.  When they reveal that they have all been accepted to Ivy League schools as well, Molly feels that she and Amy have wasted all of their time studying instead of having fun like all of their classmates.  Molly convinces a reluctant Amy that they should attend a wild party to make up for lost time and thus begins a hilarious adventure where they discover the true meaning of friendship and learn that they may have misjudged all of their classmates!  I really loved the message in this story because the characters are forced to look beyond all of the labels to really see the people behind them.  I especially liked it when Molly is confronted by Annabelle, whom she considers to be a slut, about stereotypes.  I also loved the relationship between Molly and Amy because they are so complimentary to each other ("I have no breath.") and so supportive.  I was quite impressed by all of the young cast but I particularly enjoyed Feldstein, because she has such great comedic timing (I loved her in Lady Bird, as well), and Lourd, because she steals every scene she is in with her over the top antics.  Finally, this movie is so funny (I laughed and laughed and I was not alone)!  My favorite scenes are when Molly and Amy's lyft driver turns out to be their principal (Jason Sudeikis) and when a group performs a karaoke version of "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette at the party.  This just might be my favorite movie of the year so far and I highly recommend it (with the proviso that some of the humor is a bit crude and there is a lot of profanity).