Middle School is not for the meek of heart. Participants agonize, parents wish it was over. The dramas that hourly twisted our hearts raw during those acne prone, riotously self-conscious, coming-of-curious-age days shaped our personas with brutal psychological chaos, but still with a certain OMG self-awareness of (if not outright affection for) the weird humans we were.
Amazingly, we made it to adulthood anyway. And while we are most likely hardwired to our true personalities by age 2 -honestly returning to that character once we hit our golden years (or so I have been told, heh)- middle school personas rule our middle lives for at least 30 years.
Eighth Grade is a slice of agonizing middle lives’ awkward, captivating magnificence.
The short journey is essentially told through the eyes and existence of an 8th Grade female, Kayla, firmly addicted to her cell phone and Internet that is her life line to selfie-induced, fantasy humanity, as she anxiously walks through the end days of her middle school years not so much bullied or beaten down, but more invisible and purposefully solitary; aching to be a part of something. Anything.
Except she already glows with unrecognized maturity, courage and self-created celebrity while making self-help YouTube videos. They are all posted with a simple ending plea for her contemporaries to “pleeease subscribe” and closes with a trademark tag line and hand gesture “Gucci”. (My middle-school-teacher daughter gut laughed knowingly from the comfort of the Delux Lounger next to me at the intimate new cineplex experience).
Actor Elise Fisher effortlessly is Kayla. Just absolute, flawed perfection.
Her film peers are highly recognizable as the very genuine cast of supporting characters that actually exists in life. The shallow popular girls no one will actually keep as adult friends; the brooding bad boy, who isn’t brooding, just ultimately creepy; the nerds, the undiscovered cool; the hallway rabble. All portrayed with believable simplicity. No exaggeration.
Even the pedestal occupying, admired high school crowd exposes its own brand of “eek! grimmace” eye rolling, next-school-year angst riddled personas waiting to torture the graduating eighth graders.
But it isn’t all and only the kids. With subtle inclusion in the supportive story telling, the grown-ups around Kayla appear normally and quite humanely awkward as well. Even the grayest-haired among us were originally young! We came through 8th grade, too. We are just older, world worn, sometimes wiser, sometimes not. This speaks to us.
Writer/Director Bo Burnham has avoided portraying overblown stereotypes of clownish parent/adults (thank-you). He manages to immediately draw the older among the theater audience into his celluloid experience, making everyone somewhat uncomfortably exposed as well as mindfully entertained. No small feat.
Kayla’s single parent father ( a superbly subtle and quietly confused portrayal by Josh Hamilton) shares an amazingly gentle, soul reaching moment with his daughter that is easily the film’s best message.
The unquestionable specialness of this film gem is the non-special, everyday, ordinary growing pains happening to millions of us. Then and now.
Instantly relatable to all genders and ages, Burnham has created a poignant portrait of normalcy and multi-generational angst that is painful as well as oddly comforting – we are OK and we will survive.
You remember, you think, you identify, you recognize, you squirm, you forgive, you understand, you smile.
Pretty impressive stuff!
(Rated R for some assumed adult content that would be quite common place for any eighth grader!)
GRADE: A
