It's not often you see a Rotten Tomatoes critics score as high as 99%. But that's exactly what Olivia Wilde has achieved with her feature directorial debut, Booksmart. The R-rated film tells of brainiac best friends Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), who attempt to cram four years of missed partying into a single night. Four takes:
- "Nothing funnier, smarter, quicker or more joyous has graced the big screen in a long time," according to Joe Morgenstern. "A high-school comedy with a graduate degree … it's a thrilling achievement by any measure, an AP course in the exuberance of youth," he writes at the Wall Street Journal. Wilde "proves to be an ambitious filmmaker with the technique—supported by a firecracker of a script," he adds.
- "Feldstein, whose brother Jonah Hill starred in Superbad, honors his comic legacy—and more important, forges her own," writes Justin Chang at the Los Angeles Times. Dever also gets praise for "a touching performance that feels both open and guarded." Together, the pair are "the most entertaining duo to grace a high-school comedy in some time."