BOOKSMART

To be eighteen and graduating from high school in 2019; “The Year of the Pig” an astrological sign of generosity, diligence and tenacity; this astute graduating class has it all, especially “Amy” (Kaitlyn Dever) and “Molly” (Beanie Feldstein); brilliant students (Molly is Valedictorian, off to Yale College; Amy, to Botswana, enabling challenged women); both girls have shunned their fellow classmates, those imbibing in senseless, stupid behavior, mildly testing the limits of scripted guidelines; they are dyed, pierced and painted but essentially good-hearted, well meaning, decent individuals, trying to define, in an age of technological wizardry, their role, purpose.

When Molly, astoundingly discovers that many of her ignored, disdained peers, those who partied with exuberant excess, have also been accepted into Ivy League schools, she has a cataclysmic meltdown and convinces Amy to fit four years of abstinence into one frolicking, cavorting evening, the night before graduation. For participants and viewers it is a night for the archives.

Thirty-five-year-old director Olivia Wilde (“House”) understands and shared many of the vicissitudes of Amy and Molly; smart, nerdy outcasts, alone with their stratospheric intelligence, intimidating; actors Dever and Feldstein (Jonah Hill’s sister) are compelling, captivating as teens comfortable in their own IQ’s but neophytes in the “social milieu”; their evening of indoctrination struts with hilarity, ingenuity, resulting in a revelatory epiphany for both.

THREE STARS!!!

Peneflix