Booksmart Synopsis: On the eve of their high-school graduation, two academic superstars and best friends realize they should have worked less and played more. Determined not to fall short of their peers, the girls try to cram four years of fun into one night.

Class President Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and her best friend Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) are both overachievers who have put every minute and ounce of effort into their academics in order to get into Ivy League colleges. So they’ve neglected the social aspect of being in high school, like parties, sex and drugs, in the process. This doesn’t bother either one of them, and why should it? While they’re on the path to ambitious and respected careers, the slackers and promiscuous partiers will be… doing what, exactly?

Certainly nothing impressive enough to brag about at their ten-year high school reunion. That’s what they believe, anyway. At least until Molly discovers that even the most seemingly dim-witted classmates are on the same prestigious course as she is. She realizes that she and Amy have wasted their formative teen years in the library while everyone else got to have fun while still succeeding academically.

And so, Molly convinces Amy to attend the party of Nick (Mason Gooding), the popular vice president of their graduating class. Amy is reluctant, but Molly bribes her best friend with the possibility of finally hooking up with Ryan (Victoria Ruesga), a girl Amy has been crushing on for the better part of the year. And thus begins a night of awkward, hilarious shenanigans as Amy and Molly struggle to get to Nick’s party and fulfill their last chance of teenage debauchery before Amy gets on a plane to spend the summer in Africa.

Over the course of the evening, Molly and Amy find themselves at every party but Nick’s party. They have to contend with wild child Gigi (Billie Lourde), the awkwardness of discovering their Lyft driver is their principal, and an unexpected LSD trip. But they’re both determined to push on until they finally reach Nick’s party.

This isn’t just about cramming a year’s worth of partying into one night. Amy and Molly are about to leave the familiar confines of high school and step out into the real world. If that’s not scary enough, they’ll be doing it without each other. At Nick’s party, certain events transpire, leading to hurt feelings and heartbreak, and the fractures in Molly and Amy’s friendship become evident in a really devastating scene.

For it being her directorial debut, Olivia Wilde does a fantastic job. It’s so easy to compare Booksmart to all of the other coming of age teen comedies, and yes, it bears a lot of similarities to Superbad. But that’s not a bad thing. These types of movies can be so much fun to watch if they’re done well, and Booksmart is done well.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve been in high school, but the moments found here felt genuine and nostalgic. Yes, some stereotypical characters exist, but Booksmart handles most of them with care, giving them personality and depth that can be hard to find in other movies like it. For instance, Amy’s sexuality is not played up for laughs, nor is it exploited. And the school “slut” actually has a brain and guess what? She likes giving boys blow jobs. So suck on that. I can recall quite a few of my own classmates who could have fit the roles of nearly everyone in this movie.

So often, teenagers in these movies talk with the wisdom of 40-year-olds, so I appreciated that the dialogue in Booksmart felt authentic to the age group it was representing. Feldstein and Devers also do an incredible job at making Molly and Amy’s bond feel genuine, like they’ve truly been best friends for years. So when they’re shouting some pretty painful truths at one another, it’s a really difficult thing to watch. If anyone out there is supposed to have your back, it’s your best friend. So what happens when they let you down as well?

The rest of the cast was pretty great, too. I loved Jason Sudeikis as the principal and even Michael Patrick O’Brien as the high-strung pizza driver trying to explain to Amy and Molly why they should never get into a stranger’s car. I kept hearing rave reviews for Billie Lourde as Gigi, and yes, she had some hilarious moments in the film, given she was clearly the obvious comedic relief, though I didn’t really see her performance as some sort of revelation.

One thing about Booksmart that I wasn’t terribly thrilled with is the minor subplot of one of the “cool” teachers supposedly hooking up with a graduating student because, ick, but that’s a pretty small flaw in an otherwise pretty great movie. So many movies about friendship feel one-dimensional, leaning more towards laughs than giving us any real emotion, but Booksmart balances its raunchy humor with compassion and warmth. I’m excited to see what else Olivia Wilde does in the future.

Starring: Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Billie Lourde, Jason Sudeikis, Skyler Gisondo, Jessica Williams