Senior Year Review

Rebel Wilson is a natural talent- she has the ability to be funny without doing anything, elevating whatever material she has to work with. In her latest movie "Senior Year," transcends the treacle plot and imbues honesty and care into what is essentially a joke character.

She plays Steph, a woman who's awoken from a coma, finding she's almost forty but never finished her, ahem, senior year of high school. In a most sitcom level narrative, she decides to return there and win prom queen, get popular, yada yada yada. Again, this is all basic stuff with, a hodgepodge of themes lifted from other movies and shows, but we're not here to make a case study on the believability of the script; we're here to laugh, and thanks mostly to our shiny lead, we do and do frequently.

A bit of comedic mileage comes from her adjusting to 2022, from cell phones to language about inclusion, about everything you'd expect, but it doesn't take too long before she's using her "Insta" to get followers. If anything, it reminds me how much I hated high school, and much I hate social media. (Oh and don't forget to "like and subscribe," readers!)

It doesn't make sense how quickly she's adjusted to the new decade, and there was a lot of wasted potential here; it's just an excuse to provide secondary conflict, where she needs to work to get the present comparable to the past, and that narrative copout hurts. 

There's the old rival (Zoë Chao), the former flame (Justin Hartley), the friend who wants to be more than "just" friends (Sam Richardson), all the usual ingredients. And when first time director Alex Hardcastle finds his rhythm, "Senior Year" is really, genuinely funny. But he can't maintain a proper balance between humor and drama.

I mean, "Senior Year" is essentially an underdog tale about "looking forward" and "being who you really are- that's great, and Steph's backstory about her mom's passing to cancer is tragic. But so what? Any emotional weight is constantly undermined by jokes involving, but by no means limited to, dildos, puking, and infidelity (though surprisingly not all at once). Oh yeah, and often in a high school setting within earshot of teenagers.

I'm not adverse to mature comedy, but these scenes are glaring against moments of 1980's coming-to-age sappiness. If you're going to give me fresh jokes, give me a fresh story!

By failing to invest in anybody in the picture, I essentially sat back and waited for the next punchline: a feature-length window dressing to showcase Rebel Wilson's talents. Yet for how good she is here, nobody seems to learn that just referencing something from the past doesn't make it relevant in the present. As for what the future holds? Well, all I can tell you is that, no, I will probably not win prom queen.