Eighth Grade

photo courtesy of mamasmisson.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Fan-favorite comedian Bo Burnham makes his directorial debut with Eighth Grade, a movie about the unique joys and miseries of middle school. The movie follows Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher), an eighth grader, in the week before school lets out for summer. Contrary to the optimistic tone of her YouTube channel, Kayla is timid; she struggles to fit in with her classmates and pushes her well-meaning father away. But after being voted “Most Quiet” by her class, Kayla takes steps to move outside her comfort zone.

     Eighth Grade is noteworthy for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its extraordinary perceptiveness. Of course, anybody who’s seen Bo Burnham’s prior work would expect nothing less; he’s built his career on a rapid-fire brand of humor that mixes explorations of loneliness in and amongst its manic highs. Here, though, Bo channels all of those feelings into one outlet, and the resulting story feels remarkably and wonderfully authentic.

photo courtesy of slashfilm.com

     The characters in Eighth Grade are all people we know—the popular one, the nerd, the jock, the quiet one, the try-hard dad—and yet they’re not quite the archetypes we’ve come to expect from movies about adolescence. It’s not The Breakfast Club. No, Eighth Grade observes an entirely new generation, where the old tropes have evolved and social media’s ubiquitous presence only further complicates everything.

     Eighth Grade dedicates itself to presenting this newer, more contemporary experience with searing accuracy. One need look no further than the main character, Kayla Day. She’s not a model (she’s got honest-to-goodness acne), she doesn’t deliver any smooth one-liners (she can hardly put string words together in some scenes), and she doesn’t have a posse (she surveys her classmates from a distance, via social media). Instead, she feels much more like a shy middle schooler we might actually encounter today, and the obstacles she encounters feel like the real-life challenges she might endure.

photo courtesy of vox.com

     Bo Burnham directs Eighth Grade with care, and he infuses it with his trademark unpredictability (and plenty of EDM, for good measure). He has a particular talent for making sharp, vivid contrasts. In one scene, for instance, he juxtaposes Kayla’s internal reaction to seeing the coolest boy in school with her reaction out loud (she halfheartedly blurts out “good job”). Of course, in moments such as that one, Elsie Fisher—who plays Kayla Day with incredible imagination—is as much responsible for Eighth Grade’s success as Burnham.

photo courtesy of chicagotribune.com

     But the screenplay is where Burnham’s talent shines the clearest. He gives Eighth Grade resonance on multiple levels: with realistic dialogue on the micro level, and with well-conceived narrative constructions on the macro level (as when he overlays the images of Kayla’s social struggles with the contradictory, ultra-positive audio of her Youtube videos). Eighth Grade convincingly depicts a range of experiences, from terrifying encounters with predatory high school boys and excruciating awkwardness at pool parties… to light-hearted humor and cathartic campfire conversations. Ultimately, it’s this ability to empathize—and empathize so effortlessly!—that gives Eighth Grade its profound significance.  

TRAILER

Watch the trailer here.

photo courtesy of broadwayworld.com