A brilliant story about the challenges of being an early teen.
Eighth Grade
Grade: A
Director: Bo Burnham
Screenplay: Burnham
Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hr 33 min
by John DeSando
“Growing up can be a little bit scary and weird.” Kayla (Elsie Fisher)
If you want to understand what it may mean to be an eighth-grade girl today, go with the fresh perspective of comedian and first-time director Bo Burnham to the realm of anguish, self-doubt, loneliness, and the hope of making it to high school with enough of your identity intact to make it through.
Eighth Grade is a brilliant deconstruction of the adolescent mind with enough social-media help to either crush her or move her forward to self-understanding. Kayla spends an enormous amount of time on her smart phone, occasionally doing smart, creative things, but most often texting and surfing. When doing the latter late at night, Burnham accompanies the montage with Enya’s Orinoco Flow, a fine background for the lost but searching soul in front of the screen.
The frequent bouts of watching Kayla on her regular videos, which she ironically constructs to help other teens through the tumult, are long but never dull, despite the numerous “like’s,” “ah’s,” and “you know’s.” Fisher’s ability to make us think we are watching an unscripted exposition lets her join ranks with the older heroine of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird success (same producer, Scott Rudin). Both ladies are diffident individualists searching for their identity.
This ever so enlightening character study has many light moments, never as hilarious as when nerdy Gabe (Jake Ryan) has Kayla over for dinner. While his entrée is chicken nuggets, their conversation is stilted, uncertain, and downright authentic as you would expect from teens not yet accustomed to the normal cuisine and intercourse of grownups. The scene reveals a deft directorial hand and acting far more sophisticated than could be hoped for.
Eighth grade is a drama for our times gifted to us in supposedly a rough time in summer. See it and believe it just raised the stakes for important films emerging in lackluster times.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
