I'd like to think I was a little younger than 18 when I realised that being well-behaved is different from being smart. For someone who wasn't exceptionally bright but liked to keep within the rules, I can understand the resentment that might cause, although rather than leading me to act out as the characters in this film do, I just knuckled down and tried to work harder to keep up. Still, this is a great hook for a high-school comedy – and one that speaks to me particularly clearly, despite being made more than a decade after I left school.
The film does shoot itself in the foot in the first 20 minutes before this dynamic is revealed. The pace is just a little too quick, and the jokes still haven't built up a rhythm where an audience can get their bearings and figure out why they should invest in this story. I watched the film with my wife, and she straight up got up and said she was going to bed at one point. Thankfully the long night of mishaps and adventures was about to begin. This is when the film slows down enough to explore its wide cast of characters. It settles into its groove and becomes wickedly enjoyable.
The hook is also a storytelling device. The main character Molly is fundamentally incurious about other people, which leads her to treat everyone with insufferable condescension. Her arc and that of the film are intertwined – discovering that your initial assumptions about the characters are wrong. The film is constantly setting out to disrupt our expectations. Characters you think are empty-headed jocks or prep boys, gay or straight, figures of authority or figures of fun, turn out to surprise you. You can't judge a book by its cover, and being booksmart is not the same as being streetsmart. Trying to understand people will get you further and make you happier than looking down on them. The film is at its best in those little moments of revelation, where alongside Molly you realise that everything you thought you knew was wrong.
