Booksmart's Opening Highlights How It's the Movie of Its Generation

The directorial debut from Olivia Wilde stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever (whose character is a lesbian) as studious besties who live it up before graduation.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist

May 17 2019 9:22 AM EST

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For every generation, there's a teen comedy that defines it. Booksmart -- about teen girl best friends who discover on the eve of graduation that while they were busy studying, their party-happy classmates were racking up life experience while also being accepted to Ivy League colleges -- is poised to become that era-defining comedy for Gen Z.

Booksmart's director, Olivia Wilde (her first film behind the camera), and its stars, Beanie Feldstein (Molly) and Kaitlyn Dever (Amy), have fired off the names of some of their favorite classic comedies including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, Clueless, and Mean Girls. Like those films renowned for capturing the essence of high school in the decade in which they were made, Booksmart features a central love story -- but not between the prom queen and the rebel but between female best friends Molly and Amy (who happens to be gay), which is indicative of the times.

Amid belly laughs, madcap energy embodied especially by Billie Lourde's unhinged, omnipresent Gigi, and a montage that will make audience members long to be hit in the face with water balloons, the film taps into the ethos of a sexually and gender-fluid generation that refuses to define itself with labels. Now the first six minutes of the movie have been made available ahead of the film's Memorial Day weekend release.