“Booksmart has been compared to Superbad (2007), and it’s not hard to see why. They’re both raucous but heartfelt stories about two teenage friends trying to make the most of a big night out before setting off on different paths that will probably pull them apart. But there’s another movie that comes to mind when looking at Beanie Feldstein’s Molly — Alexander Payne‘s Election (1999), and its dogged would-be class president Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), another eyes-on-the-prize striver whose ambitions have kept her apart from the rest of her classmates.
“In Booksmart, Molly, the Tracy equivalent, gets placed front and center, given a best friend and a good time. In some ways (though not in their politics), Molly feels like Tracy Flick, set free.
“And yet Booksmart can’t entirely separate itself from the kind of “you think you’re better than me” resentments that Election‘s teacher protagonist harbors toward Tracy (who does, of course, think she’s better than everyone). Molly experiences a mild comeuppance regarding her own superiority complex, but it rests on the assumption that college acceptance is a pure meritocracy, and that she’s misjudged everyone.
“Realistically, it’s more likely she misjudged the resources that those classmates had available to them. The idea that most of us really do have to work that hard to compete with those who have advantages that we never will — and that we still might not get what we want — is less comfortable as the stuff of comedy. But it’s a lot closer to the truth.” — from Allison Wilmore‘s “Booksmart Has A Blind Spot When It Comes To Class,” posted on 5.24.