Movie Review: "Eighth Grade"

You know, Dad, teaching is a lot different now than when you taught.

- Jillian Rose Kaster (2018)

"Eighth Grade": B-.  If the latest film by twenty-eight year old comic writer Bo Burnham had been titled Seventh Grade or Ninth Grade, I probably would have skipped it.  But with eight years' experience as a former eighth grade teacher (following three years as a sixth grade teacher), I felt naturally drawn to check Eighth Grade out.  The action takes place in contemporary suburbia.  Although many of the traits of thirteen and fourteen year olds as illustrated by Burnham have held constant over the decades, this movie simply could not have portrayed young teen life in the seventies, when I was experiencing the best job I ever had.  The reason is simple: the omnipresence -- one might call it the curse -- of cell phones.

The star of Eighth Grade is fifteen year old actress Elsie Fisher, who plays insecure eighth grader Kayla Day.  One of the obvious ironies concerning Kayla is displayed in the opening shot, and thereafter interspersed throughout the story, in which Kayla is making a video of herself rendering advice for the handful of subscribers to her Youtube channel.  (It is never revealed if she has any subscribers at all.)  Her topics include "Be Yourself," "Put Yourself Out There" and "How To Be Confident."  She does not break any new ground, and the verbal delivery is mostly ineloquent.  Only those who know her would be in on the secret that in real life she is unable to follow her own recommendations.  She is the opposite of the person she is urging her viewers to be.

Burnham soon manifests the point with a short first act scene.  Kayla dreads being "honored" with The Quietest Student Award, then cringes when that distinction is announced at an assembly.  Why couldn't she have been as lucky as Aiden (Luke Prael), recipient of the Best Eyes Award?

Kayla is beset with many of the problems common for her age.  She has a few friends, but is in need of a best friend who could become her confidant.  Her dad, Mark (Josh Hamilton), is a single parent trying his best to give his daughter what she needs, but it's tough when she brings her phone, complete with ear buds, to the dinner table.  Kayla finds Mark's attempts at humor annoying.  He tries to initiate a conversation, but runs into a dead end.  Mark deserves more respect, but since we're supposed to be enjoying a comedy, we viewers are asked to brush off the daughter's rude, immature behavior, just as poor Mark does.

One cleverly written thread pertains to a pool party to celebrate the birthday of the "coolest girl in school," Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere).  Kennedy's mother, clueless as to the social relationship between her daughter and Kayla (virtually none), invites Kayla to Kennedy's backyard pool party, a birthday celebration.  Good performances by the young actresses perfectly reveal the uneasiness each is feeling:  Kennedy wanting to reprimand her mother and hoping Kayla will decline; Kayla wanting to decline but instead giving an evasive answer so as not to seem ungrateful or uncool.  Kayla decides to attend, but the anguish, anxiety and self-consciousness she feels about appearing in a bathing suit is poignant.  The presence of dreamy Aiden at the co-ed gathering adds to her discomfort.

A different thread executed with less success evolves from the middle school's tradition of having the soon-to-graduate eighth graders shadow a high school student throughout a late spring day.  Kayla is assigned to Olivia (Emily Robinson), whose exuberance over the prospect of showing off her school is off the charts.  When Olivia goes above the call of duty by inviting Kayla to hang out with Olivia's high school friends at the mall, things go south, most notably a back seat game of Truth Or Dare proposed by one of the older boys.

I found it peculiar that, given the title of the film, we never once see Kayla studying.  (Good thing she didn't have me for her teacher!)  And, I only recall one scene where she's actually in a classroom.  We never find out what the subject is, because the students are being put through a "live shooter in the building drill."  Yikes!

Eighth Grade had a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, but not enough to sustain it as a successful comedy.   The first rule for a film that focuses on one character to the point where she appears in every scene is this: the character must be interesting.  Kayla has plenty of attributes to admire, but that does not qualify her as interesting.  Putting down her cell phone once in awhile would be a good first step in changing that.  

A Three Paragraph Autobiography

Exactly three years ago today I was attending my 50th high school class reunion in Minot.  The Ryan High Class of '65 had eighty-nine members.  We have the distinction of being the only class in the school's history not to have received a yearbook.  The two word explanation from the administration at the time was "no money."  It's a sore subject which raises its frowning head every time we get together.

Through the years we have had five reunions.  The same three or four women classmates end up doing 90+% of the work because they still live in the area.  So, by default, the job is theirs to accept or decline.  Thankfully, they have always stepped to the plate.  The reunions have been some of the best weekends of my social life.  We have class members throughout the country, yet many come back for every reunion.  Hardly any classmates have family left in the Magic City.  The attraction is simply the chance to be with folks we only get to see every decade or so and with whom we shared many good times and bad.  As a class we have a pretty high opinion of each other.  I definitely don't have a problem with that; in fact, I think our group's self-assessment is well deserved.

When we were students in the sixties, we were segregated into three tracks.  With rare exceptions, each student attended class only with students in her own track.  Consequently, the opportunities to develop friendships with those outside of our own track were limited, at least during the school day.  For kids like me and the incoming transfers from Minot Air Force Base, that could be problematic.  I believe that's a key reason why our reunions, even though held in a relatively remote part of the country, are well attended.  The reunions have been a vehicle for getting better acquainted with people who, ironically, share a history yet with whom we're not all that acquainted.   A case in point was Ken Korgel.

The most somber part of any reunion is learning who among our classmates has passed away.  As of three years ago, that number was up to fifteen, nine more than was the sad statistic at our 40th reunion. Ken Korgel died as a result of an automobile accident shortly after our 40th.  In the years following his retirement as a water plant operator for the city of Minot, Kenny had taken up ranching on the nearby prairies.  We were not in each other's track at Ryan, and for some reason never connected at a reunion until our 40th in 2005.  (He had transferred out of Ryan before graduation, yet was invited to the reunions.)  After speaking with him for the first time at length, I found him to be a very cordial and humorous guy, attributes common among most in my circle of friends at Ryan.  I regretted that it took forty-some years to get to know him, and was looking forward to seeing him again at the 50th.  Were it not for the reunion we would not have met.

As is common for many schools' reunions, the class members have been asked by the reunion committee to write a little bio each of the few times we've gathered.  For the first reunion in 1975, the classmates were succinct to a fault, writing only a few sentences describing their families and occupations.  But as we got older those bios started to expand.  This ritual was extremely interesting especially with regard to the submissions from classmates who were unable to make the trek to Minot.

For our 40th reunion the committee really went overboard, putting together a booklet with a page set aside for each classmate to submit a longer piece, in some cases accompanied by a picture or two.  The idea was that these would be the yearbooks we never had.  Those self-published nouveau yearbooks proved to be such a hit that the practice was repeated for our 50th reunion.  My submission for the 50th was three paragraphs, much longer than anything I'd sent to the committee before, but generally with a word count similar to what my friends wrote, i.e., those who bothered to write anything.

I've decided to post that 2015 epistle on this blog for two reasons.  First, I tried to insert a little humor, so it's within the realm of possibility, albeit slim, that some of what you read might generate a modest smile.  Who couldn't use a smile?  The second gets back to one of the reasons I've chosen to continue The Quentin Chronicle for now.  One or more of my grandchildren might some day come across the blog and read a post or two.  The subject matter of several of the posts I've written are autobiographical snippets which might fill in some of the blanks if and when they wonder what old Papa Johnny was like.  I wish I had more info on my four grandparents, two of whom died before I was born.  Oral history is hardly comprehensive; it can only take you so far.

Keep in mind that the following was written three years ago.  Some things have changed since then, most notably the arrival of granddaughters Louisa and June.  If I make it to my 60th class reunion, maybe I'll furnish an update.

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I retired in 2007 after exactly twenty-four years and two days as a commercial attorney at Wells Fargo.  My wife, Mary, and I just celebrated our thirty-ninth anniversary in June. We have three kids, ages 37-31, all of whom are married and live here in the Twin Cities.  Gina is a food manager for a suburban school district, while Michael and Jillian teach high school English and kindergarten, respectively. Our greatest joy is being with our beautiful granddaughters, Rosie (age 2) and Winnie (1).  Mary and I can attest that all the wonderful things our friends told us about grandparenting are true; lots of fun with few of the responsibilities of parenthood.

To avoid being a total couch potato, I enjoy hiking, biking, writing, traveling, attending movies and plays, and checking out the restaurant scene.  For live music entertainment we are groupies of a bluegrass band called Luke Warm & The Cool Hands, mostly because they put on a great show, but also because our son and son-in-law are bandmates.  Mary and I are both big sports fans, especially following the Twins with hopes that they can avoid their fifth consecutive season of ninety-plus losses. We snowshoe once a year so that we can claim to be hardy outdoor enthusiasts.  For a change of scenery in the non-winter months we go to our cabin in the Wisconsin North Woods, where the main activities are boating, reading, canoeing, eating, napping and, naturally, beer drinking (those last two usually occurring in inverse order).  I like to fish, but only for two hours at a time in the middle of a sunny July afternoon. I wonder why I never even get a nibble.

Even though we’ve been in it for almost sixteen years, I am reluctant to join the twenty-first century.  I am not on Facebook, don’t own a Kindle, and still subscribe to the print edition of the daily newspaper.  Snapchat and Instagram are foreign to me. I signed up for Twitter three years ago; my next tweet will be my first.  I do know how to use e-mail, however, so if your time permits, please let me hear from you at periolat47@gmail.com.