American vegan pie

Booksmart (d. Olivia Wilde)

A female-centric spin on the teen movie, and specifically, the last day(s) of high school sub-genre. It’s actually quite sweet as it chucks the usual misogyny one finds in these films out the car window where boy loses virginity at girl’s expense in the backseat. Here, it’s girl-on-girl action and Wilde turns it into a probably accurate moment of teenage embarrassment. There are passages where instead of dialogue, indie music fills the screen and it’s smartly done that I’m hoping there’s a OST. So now let’s go on with how the movie fumbles or becomes cringe-y, actually super cringe inducing.

In light of the recent news about wealthy folks buying their kids’ way into elite universities, film is about class but will not acknowledge it. The crisis that precipitates the long night of partying occurs when the pushier kid of the duo realizes that she’s not the only one going to Yale. A party kid is also going to Yale. The “dumb jock” is going to Georgetown, to her horror, while the other is going to Stanford. How is that possible? The movie doesn’t delve into the specifics, which may or may not include bribery as we begin to observe that these are upper middle class kids of what looks to be the tonier side of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. Meanwhile, the pushy kid lives in a sixties style Southern California apartment. There must have been an implied class dimension somewhere in the original or rewrites of the script but it’s nowhere to be found in the finished version. The other kid lives in a noticeably smaller house too. I wish there was a line or two about how lower middle class teens have to work doubly hard just to get into an Ivy which is coded as a path to surefire success, already a problematic notion. But whatever. It doesn’t occur to these teens that perhaps their wealthier counterparts keep making it because of their resources. Film ultimately has no class consciousness. Instead, what does it have?

It has Malala. Yes they idolize her and it’s their “safe word”. If one of the two utters it, the other person has to drop everything and follow whatever the speaker says. No question asked. It’s a rather distasteful choice for two white teens to evoke a refugee’s name as their code word. In relation to this, the less pushier kid is going to Africa to be, basically, a white savior for the summer. Uh huh. And Uganda is mentioned in a flirty talk between two white girls. Huh? In other words, the movie is still no different from most Hollywood product when it comes to thinking about the Third World as a butt of jokes. The movie tries to buckle stereotypes despite this. The pushier kid is on the plump side. Body positivity! The archetypal jock is black and his best friends are Asian and “Mexican”, the last point weirdly made explicit. What does it mean for a (tired) genre pic that tries to change some things to seem more in tune with the times? It’s progressive, but only superficially. It still desires to be elitist: go to Yale and join the ranks of upper middle class suburban champagne lifestyles and dreams. Because, otherwise, the flick implies, you don’t count.

#2019 #109