"Senior Year" Review: What the kids call Cringe!
There have been plenty of child stuck in an adult’s body movies. I could name a few good ones: Big, 13 Going On 30, Little. They’re always a little over the top, you have to go with the premise, but it hits the right notes in the end. Senior Year is not one of these films. It may follow the cookie cut examples of others, but its sweet messages are buried under so many cringeworthy moments.
Rebel Wilson is Stephanie, a coma patient who has recently woken up after a cheerleading stunt went horribly wrong twenty years prior. For her, she is still a 17 year old in the middle of senior year mentally, but life has gone on. Her friends have grown up and Martha (Mary Holland) and Seth (Sam Richardson) are now the principal and librarian of her old high school. Her ex-boyfriend Blaine (Justin Hartley) has married her nemesis, Tiffany (Zoe Chao). The biggest issue for Stephanie is that after coming to the United States from Australia, she was treated as an outcast. So she willed her way into popularity as head cheerleader and was not far from her dream of becoming prom queen. So what else would you want to do in a world where everything is so vastly different? Re-enroll in high school and become prom queen, duh!
This is the premise we are given and have to work off of for the entire movie. This is a small town where a 37 year old can do this. As Stephanie adjusts to the new cultural norms, writers Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli, and Brandon Scott Jones throw all of the throwback jokes they can muster. Even the ones that got thrown into the trash. They retrieved those and reinserted them in the script. Brittany Spears, Abercrombie, Von Dutch- anybody or thing early 2000s is at Stephanie’s disposal to talk about. Yet, it’s in her education of current culture and how she maneuvers it that the movie gets right and horribly wrong.
One of the first lessons she learns is that you can’t say gay anymore unless it’s a positively affirming statement. Its statements like these that show the gap in changes in society from the early 2000s to the present, but they aren’t discussed for further analysis. Stephanie’s plan and execution to be popular in high school is adjusted to present day by chasing after followers via social media. Therein lies the film’s emotional pull in sending a message that chasing after followers can be dangerous. However, seeing this from a 37 year old feels vastly wrong. Stephanie encourages the cheerleading squad to be raunchy in their cheers (yes, somehow she gets on the cheerleading team) and throws the party she never got to for teens. An adult pushing sexy dance moves, underage drinking and following your heart to adolescents is terrible when you step back from the movie and look at it.
I watched this movie because I needed something on in the background while doing work. Perhaps that would work for you too. As long as it’s the last thing in your Netflix queue, you can crack into this one.
Rating: D
