New Release! Eighth Grade (2018)

Director: Bo Burnham

An excellent and amazingly organic, modern "coming of age" movie that eschews the tropes and high polish of all of its popular predecessors.

Eighth Grade follows Kayla (Elsie Fisher), the titular eighth-grader who is struggling through the final few weeks of her 8th-grade year - the final year before the high school years. Though not having a romantic partner, any close friends, and being rather awkward, Kayla creates and releases youtube videos of herself offering life advice on topics such as confidence and "being yourself." She has no siblings and is raised by her single father, who is kind but has a difficult time completely connecting with Kayla.

Written and directed by early teen Youtube star and successful standup comedian Bo Burnham, this movie is one that I feel any modern young person and their parents should watch. Burnham made the wise choice of searching for authenticity in terms of situations and voices with this film, rather than write a tight, unrealistically clever story that makes a grand, artistic or crowd-pleasing statement about "life as a teenager." I think of something like Mean Girls, which is a truly fun film, but hardly a realistic depiction of what most young teens are truly struggling with at this age in a modern, developed society. It's not the John Hughes cliques and "first-world" problems of those movies,Rather, it is the very real contradiction of feeling so very out of place while also feeling the need to put up a front of wisdom and confidence which no person really has in their early teen years. This is what Kayla experiences, and the ubiquity of social media adds an element to the experience that no generation has ever had before. Where other such movies would have Kayla fight through this, "discover inner beauty," and have triumphant one-up moments by movie's end, Eighth Grade doesn't offer such satisfying yet artificial fare. Not many teens have Lindsey Lohan's good looks or her characters' smarts to overcome vicious and shallow peers. Rather, Kayla has little victories and successes which the discriminating viewer will realize won't matter much to the other teens around her, but will mean everything to her.

Like so many in her generation, Kayla uses social media to
appear much more confident and carefree than she
really is. 

I found this movie to be an excellent companion piece to last year's hit Ladybird. That film focuses on a not-particularly-special young woman finishing her final year in high school, learning some important things about herself, and taking the next steps beyond it. Eighth Grade feels similar in general structure. Neither Ladybird nor Kayla has the panache of most Hollywood teen movie protagonists, but they both feel as real as a fictional character can feel. They can be clumsy, awkward, and have a lot of trouble expressing their frustrations at times. But they figure out some important things about themselves and manage to grow from them. By each movie's end, you know that these two characters certainly do not have life figured out, by any means. But they have come up with a few important answers for themselves, and their feet are just a bit steadier than when the movies began. And we the audience can share in those small triumphs.

It can be difficult to craft a movie that both feels timely and manages to capture a more universal sense among a wide range of viewers. I feel that Eighth Grade does this exceptionally well. I have to think that viewers between ages 11 and 18 will see uncomfortably familiar scenarios here, I feel that anyone at least into their fifties will completely understand the internal struggles of Kayla. And even viewers whose middle and high school years predated the 1980s can likely see and empathize with Kayla as she struggles with finding a place for herself, even if it is in a 21st century that bears its own very unique wonders and challenges.