Booksmart

It is true that the director Olivia Wilde is good in many aspects. Considering the premise of this movie, she as a director passed with flying colors. The actresses are good as well and the whole movie has this American high school comedies feel. Without the gender drivel and one boy, who, if he wasn’t trying to get the black girl I would think was a girl, I would rate it with more stars. But the American pop culture sets a clear trend, and therefore I have a feeling that American high-schoolers don’t concern themselves with anything else than LGBT and gender movement. And also, Czech distributors could really have used a different title than this one which literally means ‘Bookworm girls want it too’. The title makes the movie look worse than it actually is. (24.09.2020)

Not long after Greta Gerwig, another American actress associated with mumblecore, Olivia Wilde, demonstrated her directorial talent. In their debuts, which were patterned on films in which they had previously acted, both directors offer a humorous, sincere and casual look at a girl’s coming of age. While Gerwig's Lady Bird was an unpretentious, unsentimental indie comedy, Booksmart offers a less introspective and more stylised, though equally truthful portrayal of the uncertainty and concerns of women at the threshold of adulthood. At the same time, this humorous, clever, fresh and confidently directed generational film is a timeless indictment of pigeonholes and pigeonholing that is informed by, among other things, earlier high-school comedies. 85% (12.12.2019)

The sexy Olivia Wilde makes her comedy debut with what could be described as a modern-day chick flick for women, and it's very refreshing. For a teen comedy, the film is very creative in terms of ideas, strange not-so-typical characters for the genre, decent dialogue, decent acting, and for the most part, it manages to avoid the typical cliché and fleshes things out beautifully. In terms of the humour, it could have been funnier, but it's still great fun and a pleasant surprise. (11.06.2019)

The dumb Czech title is the worst thing about the film, because otherwise it's a completely fine comedy, which depends not only on the unexpected situations in which the protagonists find themselves, but especially on the protagonists. The jokes sometimes explode right away, other times they just light a safety fuse and save the point for later. Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are impeccable, I was very entertained by the ubiquitous Billie Lourd and I haven't seen a funnier hallucination scene in a long time. I hope Olivia Wilde will film something again soon. (31.01.2021)

In terms of direction, it’s flawless and with an entertaining style, it’s also genre subversive and always ready to drop a well-worn motif with a self-aware, ironic joke. Both female leads are likeable and I didn’t even mind that one of them had to be chubby and the other a homosexual nerd, because this is in fact about the erasure of differences in adolescence. And yet, I can’t get rid of the aftertaste of a cynically calculated ending and the reluctance to break out more markedly from the long established viewer submissiveness of the genre that the creators try to undermine (and very successfully so during two thirds of the film). I lost interest after the argument at the party and only stayed for the climax before the entire school because I had to. Though Lady Bird and Eighth Grade were more personal and psychologically candid, Booksmart is also an inspiring film for its target audience and has a more than satisfactory creative level for any fan of movies. 70% (14.03.2020)