Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein), her best friend, are high school seniors about to graduate and go off to college. They're straight-A students who've been hitting the books more than partying. On the day before graduation, Molly learns that her classmates who are party animals, such as Triple A (Molly Gordon), aren't quite as dumb as she thought they were. She convinces Amy that they should spend the night partying. Everyone else parties, so why shouldn't they also be allowed to party? Lisa Kudrow and Will Forte play Amy's parents, Jason Sudeikis shows up as the high school principal who moonlights as a cab driver, Skyler Gisondo plays Jared, a classmate who has a crush on Molly, and Diana Silvers plays Amy's romantic interest, Hope (gee, I wonder why the screenwriters chose to give her that name!).

      Booksmart is a teen dramedy that lacks the razor-sharp wit, intelligence and delicate blend of comedy, drama and satire found in coming-of-age films like Mean Girls, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ghost World, Clueless, Heathers, The Breakfast Club and many more that have managed to transcend their own genre to become timeless classics or cult classics. Director Olivia Wilde and the screenwriters, Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins and Katie Silberman, neglect to achieve an essential element that leads to a systemic problem: they don't provide enough of a window into the heart, mind and soul of any of its characters to allow them to be palpable human beings. They spend too much of their time either searching for a party to go to or getting high or drunk during a party which quickly becomes tedious and doesn't provide new insights about neither Amy nor Molly. The fact that you don't get to meet Molly's parents shows that Booksmart doesn't even try to get to know its protagonists on a human level, although that would've been forgivable if it had humanized Molly in other ways. Ghost World, for instance, didn't introduce you to Rebecca's parents, but that didn't stop the film from being profound character study of both Enid and Rebecca. On top of that, Booksmart's third act suddenly tries to be poignant and uplifting as though Booksmart were a John Hughes movie, but, unlike Hughes' classics, it doesn't come close to earning its uplift. The supporting characters, Triple A, Jared and Hope, are actually far more compelling than Molly and Amy. However, even they are too over-the-top to be taken seriously. Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are pretty good, charismatic actor who deserve much better material.

      If Booksmart's screenplay had smarter humor that didn't seem like it were trying too hard to be funny, perhaps it could've at least worked as a comedy. Instead, it goes for witless, lowbrow humor. Amy and Molly try to start a new trend a la "fetch" in Mean Girls by saying "Malala" to each other every now and then as a code word, but that's neither funny nor clever no matter how many times the same joke is repeated. Bridesmaids played pooping into a sink for laughs, Girls Trip tried the same for peeing onto a crowd, and Superbad tried the same for spraying someone with period blood. Now Booksmart comes along and wants you to laugh at someone being vomited on. Thus ends the painfully unfunny series of Comedies With Bodily Fluid. Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!