First Take: Booksmart- this ain’t how us Brits finish high school

SYNOPSIS: On the eve of their high school graduation, two academic superstars and best friends realize they should have worked less and played more. Determined not to fall short of their peers, the girls try to cram four years of fun into one night.

With the hype surrounding Endgame still dominating cinema screens, me and the team I work with were genuinely surprised when Odeon announced a Screen Unseen for last night. Knowing what other similar preview schemes were showing to their customers this evening, I had a very good feeling it would be this film- and having now seen it, putting this on early could have helped the guys at eOne figure out exactly where it will play well, because at times it didn’t hold the attention of a Preston audience.

Olivia Wilde is making her directorial debut with this film- it’s paced decently at 1 hour 42 minutes, and she does an alright job at helming the film. But with 4 credited writers, long time readers to the blog will probably guess what I thought of the script- some of the humour tries a little too hard, but the characters feel refreshingly different for a film of this kind, however, we have seen this kind of plot so many times over the years, and as a result, it is difficult to create a different spin on this genre, especially one that is able to pass the 6 laugh test- something which this film got very close to, but not quite hitting that elusive barrier. It’s shot very well by Jason McCormick though, and Dan ‘the Automator’ Nakamura’s score just about does the job.

Performance wise, Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are able to carry this film incredibly well, and the pair of them look set to become major players in Hollywood following this film- in Feldstein’s case, she is able to show more of the comedic talents that made her work in Lady Bird so enjoyable. Supporting them is a cast that includes Billie Lourd, Lisa Kudrow, Jason Sudeikis, and this group are able to do their best with the script they’ve been given, even with a surreal animated sequence thrown in for good measure. In terms of the Screen Unseen standard though, this might be the weakest film Odeon have given us. I do know that cinema higher ups read this blog, so I am hoping that whenever the next appearance of cinema’s greatest mystery film night is gonna happen, we get a return to the usual ‘future classic’ form.

THE VERDICT

Booksmart has a lot of good things going for it- as it stands it is on a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But knowing what’s out over the next few weeks, and also knowing how UK audiences can respond to a film like this, I am surprised Netflix or Sky didn’t pick it up for a day and date release on their respective services.

RATING: 3.5/5