Eighth Grade (2018)
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Eighth Grade Movie Review
Eighth Grade is a 2018 teen film directed by Bo Burnham and starring Elsie Fisher. It’s a very effective film that isn’t perfect, but it’s still surprisingly truthful for its genre.
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“Growing up can be a little bit scary and weird“
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Kayla is a socially awkward, introvert and anxious teen girl. She struggles during school, doesn’t have any friends and makes YouTube videos life-coaching, but they don’t get any views. She gets the support of her father and eventually she makes a friend. This wasn’t as relatable a movie as I expected it to be because obviously the ending is overly happy per usual for this genre. It’s still a very effective, honest film, but I wanted more edge from it in its ending in particular.
I also really disliked such a huge emphasis on sex. I personally was a late bloomer so I could not relate to that and I simply found the film worked much better when it focused on social interactions, anxiety and friendships than just regular sex and that entire cliché of the main character pursuing a “hot” guy when the guy who is much better for her is there all along waiting for her. I found that the film was too good to resort to that usual cliché.
But other than those issues, I really liked Eighth Grade. The dialogue is excellent and very realistic in the usage of “like” and “um”. The father was too good, but Kayla is a great protagonist as she’s not pretty, she has acne, she’s not particularly smart and she’s socially awkward. I also really liked Gabe as he’s so endearing, but of course Aiden annoyed me.
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Eighth Grade is so well directed by Bo Burnham in a breakout directorial effort. The acting is also very good across the board with Elsie Fisher being also a breakthrough young talent. She delivered an especially admirable performance having in mind that she’s an extrovert in real life. I love the casting of her and she truly delivered. The score is also excellent and particularly cool and fittingly modern plus the use of Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube made the movie very timely and realistic.
Eighth Grade is rather clichéd in its sexual subplot, but it’s a strong, effective, relatable and realistic look into troublesome teenage years, social anxiety, the huge influence of social media during formative years and the loss of innocence. Bo Burnham directed the movie so well, the soundtrack is cool and Elsie Fisher is superb and quite memorable in the main role.
