Eighth Grade (2018)

Do you want to know what I remember most about being a kid in Middle School? I'll tell you that they were some of the worst and most awkward years of my life and I feel like a lot of kids feel the same about it too. That is sort of why I decided to hop on Kanopy (all you need is a library card) and watch the film Eighth Grade which was the directorial debut of Bo Burnham (The Big Sick) who also wrote the film. The film stars Elsie Fisher (Despicable Me) as Kayla Day, a shy introverted young teen who has been trying to navigate her way through middle school relatively unnoticed. The pressure is put on her as she tries to survive one more week of Eighth Grade before it's off to high school. The film also stars Josh Hamilton (13 Reasons Why) as Mark Day, Emily Robinson (Dark Was The Night) as Olivia, Jake Ryan (Isle Of Dogs) as Gabe, Daniel Zolghadri (Tales From The Loop) as Riley, Fred Hechinger (The Woman In The Window) as Trevor, Luke Prael (Boy In A Backpack) as Aiden, Catherine Oliviere (The Weaver of Raveloe) as Kennedy Graves, Missy Yager (Manchester By The Sea) as Mrs. Graves, Imani Lewis (The 40-Year Old Version) as Aniyah, and Greg Crowe (All's Fair in Love and Wizards War) as Mr. McDaniel.

I swear that this film was a slam dunk for Bo Burnham because he was able to catch everything that there was in the world about being a 14 year old and he threw it into this film. This film was so awkward just to watch because Ellie nailed being an introvert that I would almost give her an Oscar for it. Everything she did in the film seemed like something an awkward teen did back in those days from lying about having friends on an instructional video to the way she yelled at the popular kid in her school or even the way she just talked to them. One of the great things about the film is that the score helped in so many ways that it helped escalate the awkwardness even further. The question you have to ask yourself when you are done watching a film is that would this be a film that you would definitely watch again or even consider watching? The answer to the question is the same answer I gave to my friends on the first day of ninth grade and that was F*** middle school. That answer is not my reflection of the overall quality of the film, but it's just I am good remembering what it was like to be an introvert. The acting for the most part int he film was really good, but if I am being honest the MVP's of the film are Fisher and Josh Hamilton who plays her father. He was a true star of this film as the overly concerned father who just wants his daughter to be happy and is afraid of losing her. That was a superstar performance from him, but overall I am going to give the film an B for a final grade.