By Blake Hodges
I’d like to champion a movie that has a severe risk of flying under the radar. When a small studio makes a movie this amazing we need to see it. 1. Watching awesome movies is an awesome time. 2. This comes from a smaller studio that’s making a lot of quality movies but struggling to make money on them. In a day where Disney is buying everyone, it would be nice to have a few other studios out there.
What Worked:
A. The Friendship
You will fall in love with the bond between the two leads within the first two minutes of the film. I’m a pro on friendship. In fact, I’d be willing to say I’m the best at being a best friend out of anyone on the planet. I’d list all the years of long time, deep friendships here but to save us all some time just believe me when I say I’m able to spot a bond. Its incredible how close these two feel. In fact, they stayed together in preproduction all the way through filming so it makes sense that they were able to have such chemistry.
B. The Leads
After you fall in love with their friendship, make some room in your heart because you’re going to love the two of them as well. They feel real rather than cliché and that is quite the feat in a high school party movie. While this movie gets compared to Super Bad a lot, I’d say Super Bad should be so lucky as to have their two leads feel this realized as characters.
C. Comedy
How many times have you watched a trailer for a comedy, had some laughs, gotten hype for the movie and arrived to realize the best laughs were in the trailer? Did you just mumble “nearly every time?” I think I heard you say it. That’s not the case here. In fact, I’d say they saved the best laughs for the movie and didn’t even reveal them in the trailer.
D. Cast
High school party movies have a cast of characters where every minor character plays a cliché of a group of people in high school. This isn’t the case here. Each character helps to advance the plot and the theme so well I almost think you could study this movie to learn how to weave characters together well. Speaking of theme….
E. Theme
How many times have we seen “Oh my gosh. It’s the end of high school. We have to party all night like it’s the end of our lives!” This movie finds a way to have all of the fun of that premise while infusing it with a better theme: We aren’t all one dimensional people. The movie starts off strong with the friendship and the leads but follows that up with a theme that I fully bought into. The first ten minutes of this movie sure are something. Watching a nerd’s nightmare unfold really hit home for me. I’d admit that there were times I myself judged kids that “had more fun and were popular” because I also believed I would do better than them. This theme shows a couple of things: 1. You don’t have to be one thing. You can be more than the nerd or the jock or the popular girl. 2. You shouldn’t judge and assume people are so simple as to fit in those boxes so easily. If we gave everyone a chance to be more than they are labeled as, the world would be a better place. Lets make this movie a mandatory watch for kids on their first day of high school.
F. Sound Track
I am still listening to this sound track weeks after I saw this. The music will enchant you and take you along for a thrilling ride. What’s so impressive is how the music enhances the scenes without having to dominate them. The best you can hope for in most party movies is a bumping party song that doesn’t blow your ears out.
G. Climaxing
Movies like these that are based on friendships rather than “Saving the world” struggle to have a big emotional moment at the end. They very often just make a moment for the leads to fight so they can be sad, get over it and then make up. This movie subverts this and replaces a boring movie crutch with a punch in the gut.
What Didn’t Work
A. You think after all that I have any negatives? As if! I’m just going to say it. This movie is flawless.
Go see this. You’ll have a great time, you’ll support a small studio, and you’ll be able to recommend an amazing under the radar movie to all your friends. Grade: A