As The Inquisitr reported on the release of a coming-of-age comedy about three adolescent boys, yet another comedy releases its restricted trailer. Booksmart is actress Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut about two teenage girls making up for lost time on the last days of high school. The trailer was released on ONE Media’s YouTube channel and showcases the completely outrageous adventures of two teens, and their last social adventure before the beginning of serious academic life.
Booksmart sees two straight A students realizing that they have squandered their high school social experiences in the pursuit of good grades and securing admission at their chosen colleges. When others who didn’t have to sacrifice their social lives also get into the same schools, the girls make a plan to make up for lost time. A spin on the traditional teen movie, Booksmart does more than just flip the genders of the main leads from desperate young boys to rebellious teenage girls, it subverts the motivations behind the usual teen party movie. While most movies of the genre focus on superficial and unrealistic reasoning behind the madcap adventures, Booksmart seems to put a spin on that with two characters who intentionally want to experience the outrageous, for the sake of the experience itself.
Getting straight A’s. Giving zero F’s. Watch the restricted trailer for #BooksmartMovie now. pic.twitter.com/WPFjLYNfEi
— Booksmart (@Booksmart) March 11, 2019
As per the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival site, Booksmart had its world premiere at the festival on March 10 and has been receiving critical acclaim so far, as seen in this Variety review. Also when speaking to Variety before the film’s release, Wilde described her reasoning behind wanting to do a story like Booksmart.
“Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of high school movies that don’t embrace the high stakes of the adolescent experience. There’s a lot about being a teenager where it feels like life and death; you’re completely self-focused at that age. So I wanted to make a movie that felt as high-stakes as an action movie. I wanted it to be the ‘Training Day’ of high school comedies.”
Her approach definitely seems obvious in the trailer, as it’s clear that the film focuses on a different aspect of the teenage high school experience that has not yet been explored in films, or have been depicted very much through a male perspective, where hooking up and other external relationships were given more priority than any internal sense of self. Wilde is being applauded thoroughly on social media for this innovative approach as well.
Booksmart releases everywhere on May 24.
https://twitter.com/lindseyromain/status/1105215359110397952
https://twitter.com/kpfallon/status/1104962976317091841
I loved every inch of #Booksmart . A killer brew of high school party comedy crammed with true true true female friendship feelings. There are visually stunning scenes where @oliviawilde is just straight up flexing her impressive first-time director muscles. #SXSW
— Joanna Robinson (@jowrotethis) March 11, 2019