Tag Archives: Superbad

Booksmart (2019): Going Out With a Bang

Some people live by the motto “Work hard, play hard”, others just work hard. Amy (Kaitlyn Dever; Short Term 12) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein; Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising) are in the latter group. The two girls spent their time in high school ignoring their social lives in order to get the stellar grades and extracurricular activities needed to get admission into a good college. They’re perfectly fine with their choices until Molly realizes that the popular kids she has looked down on also got into great schools which, causing a mini-meltdown. Not wanting to have gone through high school without ever breaking any rules, the two young women decide they are going to crash a graduation party on their last night of school.

Booksmart has been labeled by some as “the female Superbad”, but that comparison sells the film short. It does feature two best friends trying to go to a party at the end of their high school career, but where Superbad frequently relied on crass humor, Booksmart uses its deep bench of entertaining characters. That’s not to say the film doesn’t have its fair share of vulgarity, it certainly does, but rather it has more cards in its deck to use.

The film is carried by the exceptional chemistry of its leads. Amy and Molly have the natural back-and-forth of friends that have been inseparable for years. The way they finish each other’s sentences and have routines they play through, like giving each other effusive praise on their outfits, overflows with the effortless comfort of best friends.

Molly and Amy have the bevy of inside jokes that only best friends would.

Like any story that takes place in a high school, Booksmart deals with familiar tropes. There are jocks, popular kids, theater kids, and more, but the members of each clique are done with hilarious heart. The supporting cast is uniformly amazing with a rotating ensemble of high schoolers that make their way in and out of the movie. They never feel like characters that exist only to deliver a single line. The way they come in and out of the girls path feels organic, like they are living their own story just off screen. Special standouts are Gigi (Billie Lourd; Star Wars: The Last Jedi), an unhinged young woman who seems to pop up everywhere, and the overly dramatic theater kids that deliver every line with the flamboyant affect of a self-proclaimed thespian.

In her first outing as director, Olivia Wilde turns in strong work. Each of the film’s settings, from the school to the multiple parties, is authentically chaotic like any room filled with rambunctious teens would be. She controls the chaos onscreen and provides impressive visuals given the simple locations. Her greatest asset is her mastery of comedic timing. She knows when to cross-cut between conflicting scenes to contrast the insanity of a party and when to engage in the many extended takes to emphasize escalating action. This leads to a film that is consistently funny. Booksmart is one of the few films that can boast that every character with spoken dialogue will make you laugh, often several times. Wilde’s skill at directing comedy and the genuine affection of the central friendship make Booksmart an hilarious coming-of-age story.

4/5 stars.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018): Effective, but Showy Acting

After a car accident leaves him paralyzed, John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix; Her) descends further into depression and alcoholism. His one reprieve is drawing offensive, but funny comic panels despite his limited mobility. He attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and asks an easygoing member (Jonah Hill; Superbad) to be his sponsor. The film is based on the true story of Callahan’s life and anyone interested should check out his cartoons which may actually be more enjoyable than the effective, but flawed movie.

Joaquin Phoenix seems to pick his roles based on how much spotlight is placed on him, the more, the better, of course. He’s not unique among actors in this regard, but his thirst for the centerstage can be distracting. His performance is dedicated and he is believably self-destructive as a depressed alcoholic, but his mannerisms are too blatant. His contorted neck, the limited use of his arms, and his labored speech become an actor’s affectations rather than genuine character traits. Sharing the screen with Phoenix, Hill is also looking for some critical attention. As a sponsor he is supportive, but his soft voice and pseudo-spiritual didactics pull him into the cliché of the wealthy, west-coast hippie. Both Phoenix and Hill turn in praiseworthy work, but do so in a way that draws too much attention to itself and distracts from the story.

Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) has only exacerbated this issue. He appears to have sat back and let the actors lead the film rather than control their performances. There is little in the way of moderation when it comes to delivery. Instead each main actor and almost every scene is performed as a direct appeal for an award nomination. Movies can feature Oscar-worthy scenes and roles, but when they’re comprised almost entirely from them it negates the effort. When everything is at the same, almost theatrical level of emotion, it causes habituation. If the acting is constantly turned up to 11, the intended highlights no longer stand out. Truly great performances show range, not just intensity. The film desperately needs some balance between actors and the intensity of the script in order to make the climaxes impactful.

The oversaturation of emotion is also present in the visual style of the film. The cinematography is deliberately lacking in detail with a soft, almost fuzzy image intended to recall the look of 16mm film. It features an autumnal palette and the big hair and clothes of the 70s. While it is competent in achieving the look of the period, its portrayal feels one-note. The ochre hues, like the acting, are overly intense and begging for you to notice them.

There are also unexpectedly problematic production aspects. Several camera movements are amateurish as the lens clumsily crosses behind the cast during important dialogue and there are peculiar editing decisions. Van Sant intermittently uses vertical wipes between scenes that clash with the overly emotional acting and the lack of flow between scenes is at times downright sloppy. The film delivers some strong moments, but is overwhelmed by self-consciously showy acting and questionable production decisions. It works better as material for an actor’s showreel than as a complete film.

3/5 stars.

Get a Job (2016)

Ah, the millennials. They just can’t seem to make it work, can they? Get a Job, directed by Dylan Kidd (Roger Dodger), is a comedy about a group of young people trying to find their first jobs. The movie was apparently shot in 2012, but due to distribution issues was only released this weekend in very few theaters and on VOD rather than the wide release expected for a movie playing to this broad of an audience. Miles Teller plays Will, a recent grad who starts his first day doing video production at LA Weekly only to learn that his job as been eliminated. His girlfriend Jillian (Anna Kendrick, Pitch Perfect) asks him to “step up” and find a job. unlike his pot-smoking roommates, while his old fashioned “work your way to the top” dad (Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad)  unexpectedly finds himself in a similar situation. The movie also features various subplots about Will’s roommates attempting to find their own first jobs and this is one of the reason the film falls apart.

The film feels overstuffed, despite its 82 minute runtime. It’s clear that this movie has gone through several overhauls in the editing room to create  something releasable, but their attempts have failed. None of the plot threads are given enough time to allow the characters to grow, so the climaxes have little effect. There is also dialogue referring to scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut which leads to a film that feels entirely jumbled together. Even with the 4 year wait, Get a Job still plays like an early version.

Making a good movie is the hard part.

The “comedy” script fails to produce any laughs. The writers were obviously targeting a Superbad-like movie, especially with their casting of Christopher Mintz-Plasse, but fail at creating both the likable characters and the humorous situations. The cast here is extremely talented and has done great work in other projects, but the script and editing don’t give them anything to work with. Cranston and Kendrick are the highlights, but even they can only do so much given their material and they aren’t featured enough to make an impact. Instead the jokes oscillate between trite and obscene and the language is both juvenile and crass. Alison Brie plays a hiring manager whose only lines are sexual advances that are both unwanted and unfunny. To put this in context, the film’s idea of comedy is her character trying to watch Will urinate for his drug test. Get a Job‘s humor never rises above a repulsively vulgar attempt at a Judd Apatow comedy.

Furthermore, the tone is absolutely inappropriate for the target audience. Starting right from the opening shot, Get a Job never loses its “kids these days” perspective. The film’s introductory montage posits that all of the characters’ problems are caused by their everyone-gets-a-trophy upbringing and that they can’t make it in the “real world” until they “toughen up”. Then, at the last minute, it doubles back and tries to claim, in a well delivered but unsubstantiated speech by Kendrick, that the younger generation doesn’t need the structure or direction of their parents to be happy. With no true, original, or even consistent insights to offer, the film fails at both skewering millennials and at uplifting them.

Totaling all these troubles, it’s clear that distribution issues were the least of the film’s problems. The 4 year wait apparently did not provide enough time construct a developed story and also outdated it as the economy has improved since filming. In retrospect, placing it on hold was actually the right decision because the movie has nothing to offer to any demographic. Get a Job is positioned as a film of and for the millennials but feels like a movie written by their disapproving grandparents with jokes by an obscene Seth Rogen knockoff.

1/5 stars.

Teenagers in Film

[BS Note: This article was originally written in Fall 2013]

This summer the film The Spectacular Now released to critical acclaim. However after watching the trailer I was not impressed. Everyone seemed like a stereotype or cliché and the emotional depth that critics praised was not apparent to me. I complained to a friend about how everyone looked like dumb characters acting dumb and he had an insightful comment. He said “Real teenagers look like ‘dumb characters acting dumb’. If anything, teenagers in films are too smart.” This made me look back on the teen films I’ve seen and reflect on how I behaved while in high school.

I was pretty dumb in high school. I’ll be the first to admit that and I think that most people would feel the same way (about themselves, although I’m sure others would say that about me as well). After seeing The Spectacular Now, I understand why the reviews are so positive. Yes, the characters do dumb things, but the key is that their mistakes feel sincere and relatable. Their stupidity is really authentic to the experience of being a teenager. They make wrong decisions even though the right decision seems obvious to us, the viewers, but they do it because they are coming from a place of uncertainty, both of themselves and of their futures.

Many movies feature teenagers that are insecure or uncertain. In Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean’s character acts out because of his parents’ marital troubles. In Superbad, the main characters are all awkward social misfits. So what separates the characters in The Spectacular Now from those other films? For me, it was the way the characters’ actions don’t seem driven by a plot. In both Rebel Without a Cause and Superbad, it feels like the characters make their bad decisions to move the narrative to a climactic plot point (the shootout in Rebel and the party in Superbad). In The Spectacular Now, the narrative doesn’t seem to force the characters to do things. It feels more like characters making honest mistakes that cause a particular narrative to occur. This “accidental” plot is what makes the film authentic and memorable. It elevates the characters beyond the archetypes they fill and makes them feel honest and relatable.