Booksmart (2019)

Every now and then, a new high school coming-of-age film makes its way into our heart and instantly becomes a classic. Recently, thankfully, we've had plenty of female-led ones — just think of Easy A, The Edge of Seventeen, or Lady Bird. Olivia Wilde's directorial debut, Booksmart, is not quite the revelation I was led to believe it'd be, but it's nevertheless a smart, energetic and fun teenage film with a nice twist on the genre.

The film follows two best friends, Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), whose youth so far has been all work and no play as they both have been trying to ensure themselves a place in the college of their dreams, hence they've been missing out on all the high school experiences. On the eve of their graduation, they discover that, no matter how little they worked, their classmates are all either going to great colleges — the "easy" girl (Molly Gordon) is going to Yale just like Molly — or landing dream jobs — the twenty-year-old stoner (Eduardo Franco) is going to work at Google. 

Upon discovering this, Molly's world is brutally upended, and she is overwhelmed that she and Amy have wasted so much time being perfect students and nothing else when they could have had both a social life and get into a good college. Determined to make up for lost time, the two friends set out on a wild and crazy mission of having four years of partying and fun in one night. 

Booksmart's is a very simple story, one that has been done before as it's very reminiscent of Superbad — it is essentially the girl version of it —, and there are some wasted situations there and there — when Molly and Amy go to the wrong party and end up at George's mystery murder party it could have been so much fun if handled properly but instead the writers (Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman) went for cheap laughs and made Molly and Amy take a weird and quite unsettling drug trip — but, overall, the girls' shenanigans are entertaining and fun to watch. 

The characters, unfortunately, don't go past the Saturday Night Live-style caricatures and the high school stereotypes. Also, it was quite disappointing to see how clichéd the gay characters were considering how much thought was put into the lesbian character, Amy, and the character of the teacher, Miss Fine (Jessica Williams), has a quite disappointing/problematic development. 

Thankfully, the two leading characters are fleshed out and compelling young women as the writers decided to focus on friendship and feminism rather than teen themes such as hooking up and getting drunk/high. Also, the chemistry Feldstein and Dever share is so genuine, you can't help but fall in love with them and their friendship — watching them fight like that at the party was truly heartbreaking. 

Great chemistry isn't the only thing that Feldstein and Dever bring to the film as they both give energetic and lovable performances, the first nailing the type A personality, the latter delivering very well the (sexual) struggles of a young lesbian. As for the rest of the cast, ,the actors all provide a more than solid support, whether it's Billie Lourde (Carrie Fisher's daughter) who steals the show every time she is on screen as the wild Gigi, or Noah Galvin and Austin Crute who do wonders with their criminally stereotyped gay characters. 

The comedy is another aspect of Booksmart that didn't fully work for me. While there's plenty of effective and nicely set-up jokes and gags, there still are some forced jokes are and there and overall the humour is quite raunchy. 

Despite the flaws in the script, Booksmart makes for a solid debut from Wilde who delivers a fun, visually beautiful —some sequences and shots are terrific, and the colours are so vibrant — coming-of-age film with a soundtrack that will eventually grow on you. 

Don Verdean (2015)

As a fan of Sam Rockwell, I decided to check out Don Verdean. The fact that I hadn't heard of the film before seeing it on Rockwell's filmography and that it is considerably new had me thinking that I'd grant myself one and a half hour of suffering. And I was right. 

The film follows Don Verdean (Sam Rockwell), a self-proclaimed Biblical Archaeologist that hunts down religious artefacts to prove that the stories from the Bible are true. When he is hired by a pastor, Lazarus (Danny McBride), to find sacred relics in order to bring more people to his church, Verdean is forced to get creative.

The plot is one of the major problems with Don Verdean. It is far from being interesting and engaging, it doesn't make a lot of sense, it has several uninteresting romantic subplots, and the ending, if you could call it that, is incredibly contrived. It seems like the writers knew they had to end the story but didn't know how and they just wrote something random that makes as much sense as everything else.

The characters too are the result of lazy writing. The film is filled with odd and bizarre characters but unfortunately, the writers didn't make the most of their potential. Their personalities never take over, they aren't as compelling as they should have been and. most importantly, they are not a bit funny.

Neither the cast can fix that as they all give pretty bland performances. Sam Rockwell looks bored from start to finish, hidden behind a beard and terrible clothes. The others are just as bland, Danny McBride and Will Forte being the most disappointing as they fail to make laugh consistently. There's a good chemistry between Rockwell and McBride but it feels like the director, Jared Hess, was not able to capture it.

Lionsgate Premiere

As you probably guessed, Don Verdean is not that funny of a movie and calling it comedy should be a crime. The jokes, a blend of biblical and adolescent jokes, fall flat most of the film, and when they don't they barely make you chuckle.

Unless you really love one of the actors in, whether it's Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan, Jemaine Clement, Leslie Bob, Will Forte or Danny McBride, my suggestion is that you stay the hell away from this film.