Bo Burnham
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To anyone familiar with the work of Todd Solondz, it seems like we could be in for some uncomfortable humiliation à la Welcome to the Dollhouse , where something bad happens to someone who deserves better.
And what’s more impressive than that is the way he unflinchingly and unsparingly follows a young girl on the outside of middle-school society while avoiding either sentimentalizing her or descending into the callous misanthropy that marred Todd Solondz’s conceptually similar Welcome to the Dollhouse .
Eighth Grade is, first and foremost, a charming coming of age comedy, that is never judgmental towards its lead character despite her adolescent mistakes; in fact, it’s far too wholesome to even be mentioned in the same breath as its closest narrative analogue, Todd Solondz’ dyspeptic 1995 film Welcome to the Dollhouse.
With the exception of those omnipresent screens—and headphones—these are themes that have been explored in many films over many years, with varying degrees of comforting humor (from the caustic “Welcome to the Dollhouse” to the comparatively vacuous “Mean Girls”).
It’s like what Mark says to Dawn in 1995’s Welcome to the Dollhouse , (pardon me, better movie): “High school is better.
Not since Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) has a comedy captured so vividly the agony and the ecstasy—well, OK, it's all agony—of being a homely, marginalized teenage girl.
The theme of youthful isolation has long been a staple of coming-of-age movies, diversely explored in films as different as Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen , Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In , Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang and, more recently, Deborah Haywood’s Pin Cushion or Jonah Hill’s Mid90s .
Don't be fooled, this is no censor-baiting Larry Clarke ( Bully , Kids ) or Harmony Korine ( Spring Breakers ) style expose, but rather something more akin to Catherine Hardwick's 2003 tale Thirteen, or the beloved John Hughes movies of the 1980s ( Pretty in Pink , Sixteen Candles ).
Burnham doesn’t feel the need to veer off into ultra-dark Harmony Korine territory, an envelope that films such as Fien Troch’s “Home” and Catherine Hardwicke’s “Thirteen” have pushed clear off the table in recent years.
Don't be fooled, this is no censor-baiting Larry Clarke ( Bully , Kids ) or Harmony Korine ( Spring Breakers ) style expose, but rather something more akin to Catherine Hardwick's 2003 tale Thirteen, or the beloved John Hughes movies of the 1980s ( Pretty in Pink , Sixteen Candles ).
“Eighth Grade” is more genuine, less polished and cliched than Greta Gerwig’s somewhat overrated “Lady Bird” and nowhere as creepy as Larry Clark’s “Kids.”
If Burnham’s name doesn’t ring a bell, then you most likely belong to the demographic who will see this movie as a cross between last year’s “Lady Bird” (also produced by Scott Rudin) and Larry Clark’s ultra-cautionary “Kids,” identifying with Kayla’s dad (Josh Hamilton, rivaling Michael Stuhlbarg in “Call Me by Your Name” for World’s Greatest Dad) as his daughter narrowly avoids (or not) the landmines upon which you’d gladly throw yourself in her place.
Kids this is not, yet as a highly empathetic and slightly terrifying picture of the pain of being a young person in the modern era, it’s just as scary and important.
Don't be fooled, this is no censor-baiting Larry Clarke ( Bully , Kids ) or Harmony Korine ( Spring Breakers ) style expose, but rather something more akin to Catherine Hardwick's 2003 tale Thirteen, or the beloved John Hughes movies of the 1980s ( Pretty in Pink , Sixteen Candles ).
There’s a lot of music (as our heroine is perpetually hiding under iPod headphones), but not a lot of humor—in fact, this is sort of like Sixteen Candles with the laughs removed, leaving mostly the unalleviated anxiety and humiliations of being at an “awkward age.”
“Eighth Grade” is ultimately like the “Sixteen Candles” of a new generation, but one more clear-eyed and less fanciful than Hughes’s fairy-tale vision: there’s no handsome prince for Kayla in the end, though there is the suggestion that things can get better if she’ll only put down the phone.
With the exception of those omnipresent screens—and headphones—these are themes that have been explored in many films over many years, with varying degrees of comforting humor (from the caustic “Welcome to the Dollhouse” to the comparatively vacuous “Mean Girls”).
Nor does it traffic in either the bright, mock-Darwinian humor of “Mean Girls” (2004) or the corrosively dark comedy of “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1995), to name two very different generationally beloved portraits of adolescent girlhood.
Burnham avoids most of the “Mean Girls”-style tropes in favor of a more gently humorous and nuanced approach.
What makes “Eighth Grade” so unique and different from “Superbad” or “Mean Girls” is the fact that this is a whole new generation of kids.
Neither is it a comment on millennials or Mean Girls bullying.
Consider this: Neither Kayla nor Kennedy had been born yet when the movie “Mean Girls” was released, and they’re both entirely too self-absorbed to be proactively cruel to their classmates anyway.
Don't be fooled, this is no censor-baiting Larry Clarke ( Bully , Kids ) or Harmony Korine ( Spring Breakers ) style expose, but rather something more akin to Catherine Hardwick's 2003 tale Thirteen, or the beloved John Hughes movies of the 1980s ( Pretty in Pink , Sixteen Candles ).
Elsie Fisher plays Kayla, an eighth-grader on the cusp of graduation being raised by her single father, Mark (Josh Hamilton), another in a long line of well-meaning single dads raising girls in teen movies, from Pretty In Pink to Not Another Teen Movie .
It also reminded me of something Olivier Assayas talked about on Sunday , regarding his films Demonlover and Personal Shopper, which both have a significant relationship to technology.
At a running time of just 94 minutes, Eighth Grade, is a genuinely warm, tender and wise coming-of-age film that ranks among the great coming-of-age films like Boyhood, Ghost World and The 400 Blows.
As distressing as Eighth Grade can get—and Kayla has an encounter with a high-school boy that had me once again holding my breath—the movie always makes that turn toward the comforting and affirming (which distinguishes it from other middle-school chronicles like The 400 Blows and Welcome to the Dollhouse).
You have the good looking ruffian (Luke Prael) who looks straight out of central casting for The 400 Blows, the nerdy boy (Jake Ryan) who loves the heroine but is destined for heartache, and the clueless single dad who means well but is more interested in being a friend than a parent.
Eighth Grade is destined to be included in the early adolescent cinematic pantheon alongside The 400 Blows , Kes , Welcome to the Dollhouse , and Moonrise Kingdom precisely because it simply presents middle school as it is , acne and all.
But unlike Lady Bird – or last year’s equally poignant Eighth Grade, directed by Bo Burnham – Booksmart has little time for the real and often lasting wounds of youth.
For example, one of the girls pointedly proposes opening their high-school time capsule – a la last year’s Eighth Grade – but this potential plot point is never shown or mentioned again.
But the friendship at the center of director Olivia Wilde ‘s feature directorial debut Booksmart, is explored with the same frivolity and raucousness behind Superbad and Animal House, with the same tenderness and empathy for the misunderstood and the uncool as a John Hughes film, with a comparable modern soundtrack and score of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, to create an endearing break-up and coming-of-age film all rolled into one.
Off the top of my head, these tend to be more dramatic comedies - Eighth Grade, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Edge of Seventeen all come to mind, but, for teen movies which strike a more comedic tone, Lady Bird and Booksmart, for all its over-the-top, manic comedic energy, meets that mark.
We’ve had movies like “Dazed and Confused,” “Mean Girls,” and “Breakfast Club,” and we’re very fortunate to have had two very good movies (“Eighth Grade”) about the modern youth culture in the last five years.
From Bo Burnham‘s masterpiece Eighth Grade to Greta Gerwig ‘s Oscar-nominated Lady Bird to the quietly revolutionary pictures like Love, Simon and The Miseducation of Cameron Post , this feels like something of a golden era for incisive, funny and moving pictures about youths.
Eighth Grade centers on Kayla (Elsie Fisher) and her final week of eighth grade, perhaps a slight nod to Linklater’s Dazed and Confused .
Some parts of her performance reminded this reviewer of Dustin Hoffman‘s performance in The Graduate ; particularly parts when both characters are swimming in a pool, feeling stuck in their circumstances and similar parts of their behavioural tics.
What Shi and Cho have crafted feels like a curious combination of Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age drama Lady Bird (ironically, also set in 2002), Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade , and The Incredible Hulk .
“Turning Red” is perhaps the best take on adolescence since Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade.”
Pitched somewhere between Eighth Grade , The Incredible Hulk and Scott Pilgrim , it externalises Mei’s inner transformation into an allegory for bodily changes and evolving interpersonal relationships.
Panda aside, Mei's journey to young womanhood is similar to those seen in cringe-comedies like Eighth Grade, Pen15, and Bob's Burgers' Tina Belcher plot lines.
A scene involving Kayla and the family fruit bowl echoes of American Pie , while a mall foodcourt discussion about the "generation gap" between those born in 2001 and 2005 is hilarious.
She also develops the urge to explore her sexuality in hopes of attracting the attention of a boy she is crushing on who, unfortunately, is only interested back because she, under a facade, expresses comfortably sending lewd pictures, also leads to the greatest sexual moment with food since THAT scene in American Pie.
A classmate Kayla fancies – he’s an aloof, boring-looking kid with intense eyes – thinks nothing about discussing her proficiency at oral sex as a prerequisite for dating, which sends her to YouTube tutorials and a scene with a banana that comes within a whisker of becoming a new take on American Pie‘s titular set piece.
A banana is to Eighth Grade what a warm pastry is to American Pie.
Cribbing more from the cringey French dramas of Catherine Breillat (think: a less perverse Fat Girl ) than the warm and fuzzy ‘80s staples of John Hughes, Eighth Grade is the painfully real attempt at comprehending what it means to grow up in a generation overwhelmed with information, which in turn transforms nearly everything about the process into a competition (even more so than it organically is).
It’s important to note that Burnham isn’t making Fat Girl here.
It’s tempting to place Eighth Grade within a lineage of American high-school movies such as Mean Girls and The Breakfast Club (along with Obama, Molly Ringwald is another high-profile fan).
Forget the Hollywood sheen of teen comedies like Easy A, Can’t Buy Me Love, or The Breakfast Club .
What continues to make a movie like “The Breakfast Club” such an affecting distillation of the adolescent experience (despite its sometimes retrograde representations of gender and race) is its understanding that to depict its subject matter correctly, it is imperative to zero in on the world of intra-teen social relationships in closely observed, un-prettified detail—to the exclusion of much else.
There is a phony, learn-a-lesson vibe (we used to call them "afterschool specials") to Moxie that you won't find in far superior recent work like Eighth Grade , Booksmart , or Love, Simon .
Her 2019 debut, Wine Country , deserved to make a bigger splash, and with her sophomore effort, Moxie , she’s made a teen comedy that, like the recent Booksmart and Eighth Grade , reinvigorates a genre that had long seemed stale.
The underrated Josh Hamilton is terrific in a change-of-pace role somewhat like Bob Balaban’s part as the too-squishy caregiver in Ghost World , which featured tougher teens in a grittier, more urban environment.
Think Todd Solondz’s 1995 Welcome to the Dollhouse , Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 Ghost World , and Kelly Fremon Craig’s 2016 The Edge of Seventeen .
At a running time of just 94 minutes, Eighth Grade, is a genuinely warm, tender and wise coming-of-age film that ranks among the great coming-of-age films like Boyhood, Ghost World and The 400 Blows.
Don't be fooled, this is no censor-baiting Larry Clarke ( Bully , Kids ) or Harmony Korine ( Spring Breakers ) style expose, but rather something more akin to Catherine Hardwick's 2003 tale Thirteen, or the beloved John Hughes movies of the 1980s ( Pretty in Pink , Sixteen Candles ).
At home, Kayla plugs in earphones to shut out her single father Mark (Josh Hamilton), whose clumsily proud devotion to his daughter reminded me of Billy Burke’s lovely Charlie Swan character from the Twilight movies (a thumb pricked on a broken phone-screen signals a modern twist on a fairytale trope).
It also reminded me of something Olivier Assayas talked about on Sunday , regarding his films Demonlover and Personal Shopper, which both have a significant relationship to technology.