Movie Reaction: Eighth Grade

Formula: Angus - a few years

It's taken me a while to get to Eighth Grade. There are a few reason for this. One is a matter of timing. Between vacation and the resettling of MoviePass, I had trouble finding a time to get to it. Also, there's the simple fact that 8th graders are among the worst kinds of people, so a movie about them carried little interest for me. To give you an idea of how close I was to skipping it this time even, my deciding factor was that I wanted Penn Station and there was a theater with Eighth Grade playing across the street. Otherwise, it probably would've been BlacKkKlansman this week.

Eighth Grade was about what I expected, more for better than for worse. It covers the last week of 8th grade from the perspective of the class quiet girl, Kayla (Elsie Fisher). It's told episodically through assorted adventures (a pool party, a high school shadow day, hanging out at the mall) but with enough thematic tissue connecting it all to work as a coherent whole.

More than anything, writer/director Bo Burnham nails the tone. So much of the movie feels dead-on accurate. Nearly every character feels real, recognizable, and relatable. I'm at a weird convergence of age and maturity where I relate to Kayla (naturally introverted with no idea how to put herself out there) and her father (a guy who just doesn't want to mess things up and is making it all up as he goes along), played by Josh Hamilton, in equal measure. Even smaller characters feel real. The "cool kids" in her class who are actually just as lame as Kayla*, the parents who have to ignore how awful their kids are being because they know (hope) it's just a phase, the somewhat nerdy kid who sort of has a crush on Kayla and has no idea how to be cool about it. There's a scene when Kayla hangs out with some high school kids that features some truly "high school" conversation. I'm not sure how Burnham captured it all so perfectly. It's all one big 90 minute awkward mess.

*All 8th graders are lame. It's a persistent condition.

I love what Burnham does with the time capsules. The movie begins with Kayla getting a time capsule she made at the beginning of 6th grade and ends with her making one to receive at the end of high school. I've done and still do things like that now (I assume I'm not alone in that, but if you don't, I recommend it. It's...enlightening). I have to say, Kayla learns things by 8th grade that I'm still learning now. Perhaps it underlines the point of the movie too much, but I liked it.

I have trouble saying that I liked Eighth Grade. It's like saying that I like The Act of Killing or Requiem for a Dream. I'm impressed by how real it is. The detail work is tremendous. There's one scene between Kayla and her dad that is as touching as anything I'll see this year. I see great value in younger audiences watching this. The movie doesn't talk down to its characters, which is harder than it sounds. Elsie Fisher is a talent. Josh Hamilton is a great goofy dad. I had a couple issues with the lack of nuance in a few of the antagonist characters. Mainly though, the one thing working against Eighth Grade is that it too perfectly recreates a time I'd rather not revisit. In a way, that's the highest praise I can give it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend