After helming a few music videos and shorts, Wilde has blossomed into a fully-fledged filmmaker with style and voice to spare. Her sense of humor shines through every ridiculous situation, sharp quip or a visual gag, be it poking fun at a rich kid’s pimped out ride with a license plate reading “FUK BOI” or the existence of Gigi (Billie Lourd), a character best remembered for her unprompted wild antics, mysterious ability to pop up at all of the night’s parties and her “cool girl gone eccentric” vibe. Wilde also has fun riffing on Hollywood musical tropes and creating a stop motion drug hallucination that’s almost too bizarre to describe. It’s better if you just watch and laugh your way through it.
Wilde’s acting background helped lead the cast to give both wonderfully deranged and emotionally moving performances. We ride the highs and lows of Molly and Amy’s odyssey through Los Angeles at breakneck speeds but nothing feels lost. We get a sense of their deep friendship, much like the two best friends at the center of 2007’s “Superbad.” They tease each other, they have their own shared language, like using the name Malala to ask each other for help, and rituals like over-complimenting each other’s outfits. Usually, so many names on a script would be cause for worry, but the contributions of Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins and a final draft by recent hit scribe Katie Silberman (“Isn’t It Romantic,” “Set It Up”) does not disappoint. When I spoke with some members of the cast and crew at South by Southwest, the actors said they felt supported by Wilde to build out their characters as they saw fit, which is likely why the high schoolers sound like kids their age talking about their chosen Harry Potter House.
Feldstein and Dever are perfectly matched to bounce off of each other’s personalities, even if their characters seem similar at first glance. Playing the best friend part in “Lady Bird,” Feldstein had limited screentime to show off her comic chops, but it was obvious that she already had great timing and hilarious exaggerated reactions. Given the spotlight in “Booksmart,” she takes her antics to 11 with a confident and determined energy for her misguided and strongwilled character. Dever makes a lot of Amy’s shy girl persona and her quiet crush on another girl. She subtly plays out Amy’s mortification at her parents’ cutesy enthusiasm, her reluctance to be honest about her feelings and her protective loyalty to Molly, even when she feels overwhelmed by her friend’s bombastic personality.
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