Julia Ramirez

To put it bluntly, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I can see that critics and other reviewers are giving this movie high ratings because its supposedly a “breakthrough” genre bender that means to touch on practically every social issue out there. The movie starts out pretty solid, with a convincing introduction of the characters and I enjoyed the funny twist on using the “white voice” - a great way in my opinion to show the main characters struggle to move up in his job and succumbing to the man, therefore an effective way of addressing these societal issues. After the first 30 minutes though, it starts to spiral downhill, with the plot bouncing around everywhere and seemingly trying way too hard to make the audience laugh and eventually shock them more and more until we reach the point where the movie takes a really disturbing and extremely unnecessary turn. SPOILER - the horse men and Armie Hammers entire character are completely ridiculous ways to shed light on an actually important issue about the workforce - so bad that it makes the audience feel more disgusted and weirded out than being eye-opening or “woke”. Although I literally contemplated leaving the theater for the entire last 40 mins of the movie, I stuck it out hoping that it could be redeemed and give us something meaningful to hold on to, this was not the case. It’s a shame because I came into the theater with an open mind and ready to have my eyes opened in what looked like a really unique way, but left utterly disgusted and disappointed. I also had a lot of hope for the cast, and hope to see them in some better movies in the future.

I really don’t understand why this movie is so highly rated by critics. It seemed to me to be trying extremely hard to be “woke” and relevant to social and teen issues of today, except did a terrible job because literally no high school experience is like this. I know it’s supposed to depict a somewhat exaggerated and stereotypical version of what high schoolers are like, but I’d much rather watch something along the lines of Superbad or sixteen candles if that’s what I’m looking for. The humor in this movie is also extremely dry and not smart whatsoever. There were a ton of really forced, crude jokes and really unnecessary bad language, which I normally don’t care about at all but here it just seemed overused without any good reason. I’m disappointed that someone as cool as Olivia Wilde didn’t do a better job of giving this movie a stronger plot and funnier jokes. The plot itself starts off pretty solid, but spirals into a weird chain of events with characters that are Really exaggerated, one dimensional and trying to be so quirky but are given no time to actually develop. It then rushes into a climatic and ridiculous ending that tries to stuff in as many crazy and dramatic scenarios as possible, concluding with what’s meant to make you feel super nostalgic and deep, but because the movie is rushed and unrealistic I had a hard time feeling any connection at all. I did enjoy the soundtrack, but it so obviously was doing a lot of work to make up for the weak plot. I think the acting was good and the cast was also interesting, definitely actors that I can see doing some great stuff someday. This movie is really just an attempt at remaking old teen high school movies into something more relevant and fresh for audiences today, but is more cringeworthy and crude than “woke”. It doesn’t break through any barriers like I think it meant to, as it simply tries way too hard to make the audience laugh, uses a ton of clichés, and attempts to jumble a bunch of already good coming-of-age movies together.