Eighth Grade (2018) Review!!!

Synopsis – An introverted teenage girl tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school.

My Take – Truth to be told, despite all the trials and tribulations I have gone through the 29 years of my existence, I still consider middle school as the worst time of my life and I doubt anything is ever going to ever change that perceptive. Like myself, many considered it a nightmare too. The prison like homework, the social divide in classrooms based on how cool you are and what marks you score in the midterms, does end up taking its toll. For three years, we as half adults with raging hormones and underdeveloped empathy prey and pounce on any form of weakness found in our peers, all done just in the hopes of surviving somehow.

Perhaps that’s why I found myself so perplexed by watching what comedian Bo Burnham had accomplished with his writing/directorial debut in the latest film from A24, the champion studio of independent films, as the film locates and presses on pretty much every lingering adolescent pain point you’ve got buried, and then a few more you never realized you had.

Here, YouTube star turned innovative stand-up comedian Bo Burnham seems to have a bone-deep and clear-eyed understanding of the unfortunate chapter of adolescence, and just how hard it can be for all but the most adaptive and impossibly popular. It finds a way to talk about anxiety and shyness and puberty in piercing new ways, giving young people the words to convey what even adults still can only say inarticulately.

Even more impressive, the film approaches this coming-of-age experience entirely through a lens we rarely see: the teenage female gaze. But what makes this coming-of-age film special is that it’s at once harsh and humanist: a perceptive, realistic comedy about tweenaged life that’s also rich in compassion, that scarcest of junior-high commodities, and doesn’t spare any detail and doesn’t alter any truth.

The story follows Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher), a 13-year-old eighth grade student finishing her final term at a public middle school in the state of New York. When she is not attending school, she is posting motivational videos on YouTube about confidence and self-image, but the truth is Kayla is just a shy girl pretending to be confident. She doesn’t seem to have any friends, and her classmates just treat her like she’s invisible and also award her the “Most Quiet” award. While at home, her single father, Mark (Josh Hamilton), struggles to connect with her and break her reliance on social media, Kayla embarks on a mission to put herself out there or at least pick up a few companions along the way, in order to start high school fresh, but of course her well-meaning attempts often turn out to be disastrous.

So much of this film paints a portrait of these kids growing-up in a confusing time with an even more confusing climate of the internet and social media floating around them. It’s tough to make films about technology, youth culture, and the frightening limitlessness of a connected world without coming off as patronizing or out-of-touch. Here, director Burnham, is running headlong at those topics here with his debut film, and the results are resonant. His portrait of Kayla’s eighth-grade experience is as wrenching as it is sweetly funny, and in moments like her Enya-scored night of browsing, it can be at once mesmerizing and terrifying. Kayla’s story will be familiar to anyone who went through that awkward, often lonely and confusing middle school experience.

The film is a relentless 90-minute onslaught of what will be universal feelings among awkward kids, like that feeling of being the odd one out at a “popular kid” birthday party, or crushing hard on someone far beyond your knowledge or comfort levels of sexuality, or feeling like there is a much cooler you than anyone else has ever bothered to get to know. When we first meet Kayla, she’s speaking directly into a camera, stammering out advice to a largely theoretical audience of YouTube followers.

The videos turn out to be the film’s most schematic choice, providing on-the-nose commentary, i.e., Kayla talking about “putting herself out there” right before attending the social minefield of a pool party she was invited to at basically parental gunpoint. But they may be the most personal choice, too, given that director Burnham, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, got his start telling jokes and playing songs in front of a webcam.

It’s perhaps not surprising that a one-time YouTube star would understand the fundamental ways that technology has touched the teenage experience—how teens now fight to be seen not just in the classroom but also in the arenas of Instagram and Twitter. Far from a kids-these-days screed, the film presents screen addiction as simply a reality, not a problem. The film tries to understand, rather than judge, and it does that by centering firmly on Kayla. This isn’t an ensemble piece; the other characters at school and home revolve around her, even as they ignore her.

How better to summarize the teenage experience? Everything that’s happening is happening to Kayla, including her shy and awkward interactions with the popular girls at school, or her encouraging visit to the new high school she’ll be attending, where she’s taken under the wing of a bubbly senior named Olivia (Emily Robinson) while she mightily thirsts after her class’s heartthrob, Aiden (Luke Prael). And she tries, with all her might, to feel like the thing she’s always wanted to be: the “coolest girl in the world.” The film is also exceedingly honest, as it doesn’t depict Kayla’s experiences the way we might think they should be for an eighth grader or the way we might want them to be-they’re simply presented as they are. Pool parties are a source of unbearable discomfort. First sexual encounters are not always pleasant. Kids with exploding hormones and little impulse control randomly shout unfunny phrases at assemblies in the hopes of earning a laugh.

Speaking of the latter, some of the film’s funniest, most poignant moments are between Kayla and her endlessly supportive single dad, Mark. In a way, director Burnham takes his cues from this proud parent, who wants nothing more than his daughter, and everyone else, to see her the way he does. Through everything, her dad does his best to reach her and remind her how great he thinks she is (just about the last thing Kayla wants to hear, of course). Here, director Burnham uses extreme closeups of Fisher’s face—not quite rid of its baby fat and spattered with just a bit of acne—to gain its sense of intimacy. He watches, with anthropological fascination, as Kayla goes through the ritual of posing for dozens of selfies, trying to find just the right filter or bunny ears or heart emojis or what have you to construct her public self.

The film is perfectly attuned to Kayla’s inner life—it feels like a locked diary that has been opened and shared with the world. Thankfully, the film doesn’t venture into after school-special territory, as director Burnham doesn’t using his main character as a symbol of some larger crisis of teens broadcasting online—Kayla is almost intentionally inconspicuous, perhaps afraid to share her sillier or bolder thoughts for fear of coming off as weird. The rare occasions when they do breach the surface are a delight, offering evidence of the smart, fascinating person Kayla is surely on her way to becoming.

However, there are few odds and ends that come from the fact that Bo Burnham is a first-time director. He attempts visual motifs with his cinematography, but they eventually recede as the film progresses and we get odd choices of handheld camera work instead. It feels hardly artificial and genuine, for certain, but it lacks a real punch and artistry that I think was needed to push this even harder. Along with it, I think he pushes towards “breaking points” in certain scenes of the film that could really create powerful, effective scenes of drama, but it seems he’s afraid of going just that extra length to punch us with the emotion of it.

Performance wise, Elsie Fisher is brilliant in her portrayal of the young girl, although many of her scenes make us cringe to say the least, her performance remains authentic and special. She opens the door to her character’s heart and gives audiences a real look at Kayla’s thoughts and feelings. Josh Hamilton as the sweet guy dad is an exceedingly brilliant scene stealer here. While Emily Robinson and Luke Prael are effective. On the whole, ‘Eighth Grade’ is a pitch-perfect, emotional yet hilarious depiction of one of the most turbulent times of growing up.