- 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.
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