Senior Year

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on May 26, 2022.

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Alex Hardcastle.

Cast: Rebel Wilson, Sam Richardson, Mary Holland, Zoë Chao, Justin Hartley, Chris Parnell, Angourie Rice, Avantika Vandanapu, Michael Cimino, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Brandon Scott Jones, Ana Yi Puig, Zaire Adams, Molly Brown.

"You can't call people 'old AF' - that's not very woke."

High school is, was, and probably always will be difficult. There are good bits, but they're usually peppered in between the heartbreaks, bullying, self-doubts, mistakes and the general awkwardness of being a teenager. Somehow, for most people anyway, high school manages simultaneously to be one of the best and worst times of your life.

Good teen movies understand this. They empathise with their subjects and audience of teens and former teens. The lows are like mortal blows that we all feel, and the highs remind us of our own small victories. Good teen movies get what it is to be a teen.

Senior Year is partly a fish-out-of-water comedy, but it's mainly a teen movie, and it's on this front that it fails. Its characters are caricatures and there is little-to-no empathy for teenage life. And there's nothing Rebel Wilson or anyone else can do to save the film.

Wilson plays Steph, who awakes from a coma after 20 years with one aim in life - to return to high school and pick up where she left off. That means throwing herself back into high school, trying to be prom queen, and regaining her status as the most popular girl in school. 

Naturally Steph is going to learn some life lessons, but her dim-witted desires make it hard to get on board with her quest. When we finally get an insight into why it means so much to her to be prom queen, it actually doesn't really make sense.

Not that the rest of the film does. Steph almost dies when she lapses into a coma, and it's caught on camera, but there are no recriminations for the perpetrator. But more frustrating is the film's narrow view of its main teen characters, none of whom seem like real people, despite the best efforts of the cast.

Wilson is a prime example. Only sporadically amusing, Steph never comes across as an actual person despite Wilson's earnest efforts. It only makes it harder to care about her situation. It also amplifies the idea that Wilson doesn't have what it takes to lead a film. This is probably not true, but this isn't the movie that will change minds. 

All of this would matter little if the film was actually funny, but outside of the efforts of Mary Holland (whose timing and delivery is perfect), very few jokes land. So many gags hit like "teens are too woke LOL" or "teens are too fixated on being insta-famous LOL", both of which feel like simplifications that aren't even that funny to start with.

The occasional pop culture reference works, but the film suffers from failing to either properly parody teen movies or be one.