Movie review: Booksmart
BOOKSMART (NC16)
Premieres April 30, 7.10pm, on Fox Movies (StarHub TV Ch 622/Singtel TV Ch 414)
When it comes to raunchy coming-of-age teen comedies, Booksmart is among the top of the class.
It was all over the film festival circuit last year, with rave reviews for actress Olivia Wilde's directorial debut and leading ladies Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever.
The high marks - it received a 97 per cent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes - are indeed well-earned. Because even though it treads a well-worn genre chockful of formulaic tropes and stereotypes, Wilde proves you can still score fresh and wickedly funny results.
On the eve of their high school graduation, two academic superstars and best friends (Feldstein and Dever) are determined to cram four years of fun into one night, after discovering their hard-partying classmates also got into Ivy League universities despite not studying at all.
Hilarity ensues when the girls hop from party to party, like an insanely trippy sequence where they hallucinate they are Barbie dolls.
Powered by a quartet of female writers and endearing lead performances, Booksmart truly stands out from its peers by unabashedly celebrating female friendship and intelligence. - JEANMARIE TAN -4.5 Ticks
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