‘Booksmart’ Gives Beanie Feldstein Her Well-Deserved Spotlight

Remember Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird? Remember Lady Bird’s best friend Julie, played by the charismatic Beanie Feldstein? If you thought Julie needed her own movie, Booksmart was made for you.

Booksmart stars Feldstein as Molly, a high school senior (and class president) who has worked hard for her entire academic career to become her school’s valedictorian. She and her best friend, Amy (Short Term 12’s Kaitlyn Dever), have studied so hard for the past four years that they have forgotten to have any fun. So, on the night before their graduation, the pair decides that they are going to go to the biggest party in town and finally get to know their classmates outside of school. Their journey to the party helps them get to know more about each other, too.

The directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde (Cowboys & Aliens, The Lazarus Effect), Booksmart has been hailed as a female version of Superbad. And that comparison is valid; the basic plot concept of two best friends out for a night of hell-raising before heading off to different colleges (or, in Amy’s case, on a soul-searching activist’s journey to Africa) is essentially the same. Heck, Beanie Feldstein’s big brother Jonah Hill was even in Superbad. But being a Superbad clone doesn’t mean that you’ve seen Booksmart before.

At first glance, Booksmart is just a wild night out movie. But the characters are extremely relatable, so there’s an emotional investment in their journey. It’s not that everyone is going to see a part of themselves in Molly and Amy, it’s that everyone will wish that they had a friend like Molly or Amy, a ride-or-die that is there until the bitter end. Of course, their relationship goes through its arc over the course of the evening, but when the chips are down, these two have each other’s backs. Whether it’s supporting each other as they chase down their respective crushes or calling each other out on their petty bullpucky, their friendship is one for the ages. It’s Molly and Amy against the world, and that’s a big part of what makes Booksmart so great.

There are no fewer than four screenwriters credited on Booksmart. The original script was written by Susanna Fogel (The Spy Who Dumped Me) along with Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins (both of whom have written for “Trophy Wife” and “Good Girls”), with Katie Silberman (Isn’t It Romantic) coming in to do crucial rewrites that would help solidify Wilde’s sweetly comedic vision. Add in performances from Feldstein and Dever that feel more improvisational than scripted, and Booksmart has that perfect storm, lightning-in-a-bottle vibe that only happens when a whole lot of creative personalities come together to construct something really special.

Whether Olivia Wilde will become the next Greta Gerwig is up in the air. Booksmart has all of the heart and humor of Lady Bird, but doesn’t quite have the same personal touch, which is probably a symptom of too many screenwriters on the project. Whether it will have the same awards buzz as Lady Bird also remains to be seen, but Booksmart is one of the best movies of the year, so if it doesn’t garner any nominations (at least for the acting), it says more about the awards than it says about the movie.