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Teenagers and friends Molly and Amy are preparing for the last day of high school. Upon overhearing gossip about herself on the toilet, Molly confronts a girl and two guys, boasting that she will study at Yale University, but when said three admit they also got into prestigious colleges or found a high-paid job at Google, Molly has a realization: she and Amy constantly studied and missed out on having fun, while others were able to do both. Molly and Amy thus decide to go to Nick's party, but first mistakenly land on Jared's party with no guests, share a ride with their principal, meet a pizza delivery guy... Finally at Nick's party, Molly and Amy are disappointed that their crushes Nick and Ryan are kissing. When the police arrives, Amy diverts their attention by being arrested. Molly bails her out and they arrive just in time to their graduation day.
A rare teen or high school comedy film revolving around intelligent teenagers, "Booksmart" nonetheless errs by featuring two likeable characters in a wrong story. The obfuscated plot chaotically shows protagonists Molly and Amy trying to find their way to Nick's party, but they get to another party, then leave, then search for the location of Nick's party through his pizza delivery guy... They finally reach Nick's party only 56 minutes into the film, which is quite late. Yes, the viewers find out a lot about their relations and character dynamics, but they would have been better suited in a better planned storyline revolving around them in high school, and not focusing on a meandering, episodic goose chase. The best bits are when the two friends bond, such as when Molly admits a secret to Amy: "I once tried to masturbate using an electric toothbrush. But I got a terrible UTI." - "I wish that would have been a secret, but you've mentioned it many, many times." Two weird moments stand out: in one, after a girl gives them two strawberries to eat, Molly and Amy realize these were dipped in some sort of a drug, and thus have a bizarre hallucination imagining they are miniature Barbie dolls in a living room presented through stop-motion. The other is the rather misguided one where Amy is about to have a lesbian encounter with Hope, who is lying on the ground, but Amy then takes a sip from someone else's beer cup, something is inside, so she throws up on Hope. This scene should have been handled better. The dialogue feels way too smart and articulate for teenagers to really talk like that, but it has its charm, and at the end there is an emotional farewell to high school on graduation day, and the notion that every ending is in a way a new beginning.
Grade:++
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