Eighth Grade (2018)
Directed by Bo Burnham
Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.
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41 films that influenced Eighth Grade
What critics say influenced Eighth Grade
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.
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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.
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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.