But I will be fair and start with the positives first as always (trust me, this will not take long) and in all fairness, Angourice Rice gives a really good performance in this film. She was my favourite performance in fact. It helps that besides Rebel Wilson, she's someone who I'm very familiar with and I do enjoy her as an actress. It was also a nice surprise to find out she's actually Australian. I always thought she was American but besides her, the rest of the cast, besides one who I will talk about, are fine. Just fine. No one in particular standouts but no one is completely terrible either.
And my final positive for this film is its on Netflix so if you really get tired of it that much, you can stop it whenever you want and never watch it again. It won't charge you anything besides your monthly Netflix charge and you do feel a big sense of achievement that you actually managed to make it through the film. Yeah I was just desperate for a positive at that stage.
Now onto the negatives. My god this film is insufferable to the point where I wanted to take a cheese grater to my head because that would have probably been more fun. But onto why, let's start with the biggest reason: Rebel Wilson. I have never liked her as an actress in any way and this film just affirms it for me. She is just cringe worthy all the way through and when she tries to go dramatic, I don't like to criticise acting but she's really bad. She attempt to cry and she looks like she's being blinded by a light whilst suffering from a toothache.
And it does not help that her character is equally just as bad. She is one of the most unlikeable protagonists I've ever seen. She's self indulgent, selfish and even though she does have an arc, it doesn't feel like she undergoes any sort of transformation.
And the characters in general are just as bad. They don't act like normal human beings at all. They feel so cartoonish is every scene they're in. The students feel like an exaggerated stereotypical definition of a typical student and the teachers are either bland or embarrassing to watch.
Now let's talk about the comedy. Where is it in this film? The comedy is nowhere to be seen and when there's attempted comedy, you are just cringing at the screen or just not laughing. There's just nothing funny about this film and that saddens me because the comedy genre does feel like its dying nowadays. Comedy is always going to be subjective but it feels like nowadays we just get the laziest possible jokes or attempts.
The writing in this film is also pretty terrible. First yes I know I'm watching a comedy but the concept of a cheerleader falling into a coma and waking up 20 years later just feels cheesy like it's from a Disney channel film. Then you have the school scenes which if you are bothered by a films interpretation of high school before, this one will bother you even more. Two students make out in class and the teacher just kindly asks them to stop like he's intimated by them and that's in the first 10 minutes.
The choices of music is also very odd. This is a film set in 2022 yet the music choices feel quite outdated. The first 20 minutes make enough sense but after that, the songs playing feel like they're in the wrong time period. I know this is a nit pick but when you're really not enjoying the film, you start to pick up on certain things.
And finally this film has some of the worst uses of political statements I've seen in a film. Now I would like to point out I am not against a film having something to say on society so please don't twist my words but the best way to do these sorts of messages is to interwoven it with the theme, tell it through story, make it relevant to the film. Senior year decides to make these statements by pausing for 5 minutes and talking about different subject matters like they're reading lines from a Wikipedia page and what's worse about that approach is you make the audience feel they're being preached at but not only that, the fact that this film is talking about multiple subject matters just make the film feel thematically unfocused.
There's one sequence in particular that got me the most. The film in one section wants to talk about consent which again is such an important issue to address and should be done more carefully than this film approach. I won't spoil it but the sequence in question feels quite offensive to the subject matter itself and what it's supposed to stand for and I've even spoken to women who were equally disgusted with this films approach.
So overall I hated this film. This is the first film this year I finished and just hated watching. I do not recommend it at all and this is also a film that I'd love to be a fly on the wall and just watch the actors reactions to the scenes they had to film. It's just baffling to me what the actors actually had to do.
⭐️
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