Booksmart

Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever show off their geeky charm in Booksmart

Olivia Wilde's Booksmart is a fine first feature and pleasant coming of age comedy. Critical hype trumpeted this as a distaff Superbad, but I think Booksmart is the better movie. Visually the film is a mix of Portlandia like comic cameos linked with music video segments. Nothing revelatory, yet Wilde brings a sense of delight to a tired genre.

Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein have a nice rapport as high school besties facing graduation and separation. The duo fear they have missed the frolics of youth while toiling on their studies and embark on a last ditch spree. Innocence is lost, horizons are widened and romantic rectangles are reconfigured; thus are the dictates of the genre.

There is an impish esprit in the appearances of the supporting cast. All sparkle for a few moments, especially Jason Sudeikis, Mason Gooding, Skylar Gisondo and Molly Gordon. Billie Lourde is neat fun as a spirit of mischief and chaos. She functions as an imp of the perverse, much like Roddy McDowell in George Axelrod's Lord Love A Duck: an even stranger SoCal teen comedy. Wilde eschews realism with Lourde's buzzed fairy like apparitions. The film has some well written laughs amidst the mild debauchery. I especially enjoyed the animated Barbie sequence. Wilde and her collaborators provide dollops of humor to make the feminism go down in Booksmart.