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Title: Eighth Grade (2018)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Elsie Fisher | ... | Kayla Day | |
| Josh Hamilton | ... | Mark Day | |
| Emily Robinson | ... | Olivia | |
| Jake Ryan | ... | Gabe | |
| Daniel Zolghadri | ... | Riley | |
| Fred Hechinger | ... | Trevor | |
| Imani Lewis | ... | Aniyah | |
| Luke Prael | ... | Aiden | |
| Catherine Oliviere | ... | Kennedy | |
 |
Nora Mullins | ... | Steph |
|
|
Gerald W. Jones | ... | Tyler |
| Missy Yager | ... | Mrs. Graves | |
| Shacha Temirov | ... | Mason | |
| Greg Crowe | ... | Mr. McDaniel | |
| Thomas John O'Reilly | ... | Edmund | |
In his feature film directorial debut, comedian Bo Burnham deftly encapsulates the awkwardness, angst, self-loathing and reinvention that a teenage girl goes through on the cusp of high school. Given that the 27-year-old stand-up comic achieved fame as a teenager himself through YouTube by riffing on his insecurities, he is uniquely capable as the film's writer and director to tell the story of Kayla, an anxious girl navigating the final days of her eighth grade year, despite creating a protagonist w female instead of male. Like Burnham did more than a decade ago, 13-year-old Kayla turns to YouTube to express herself, where she makes advice blogs in which she pretends to have it all together. In reality, Kayla is sullen and silent around her single father and her peers at school, carrying out most of her interactions with her classmates on Instagram and Twitter. Her YouTube videos are a clever narrative tool that provide insight into her inner hopes and dreams, much like an ...
What is that sound, you ask? It's the nearly audible cringing that accompanies every frame of "Eighth Grade," an epic of middle school proportions.
It's hard to know who cringes more: the film's protagonist, played in a pimpled blaze of glory by Elsie Fisher, or those of us watching her character navigate the landmine-riddled battlefield of adolescence. The film is painful to the extreme, but painful in that cathartic way that stories are when you know everyone has experienced some version of it. We've all been there and, for better or worse, most of us come out on the other side and live to tell the tale.
My junior high experience was nowhere nearly as awkward and angst-filled as the one shown in this film, but I also didn't have to contend with social media and the additional pressures it puts on kids to be popular. As a 43-year-old man watching this movie, I most related to the dad, played winningly and goofily by Josh Hamilton. His father character tries awfully hard but is at a loss for most of the movie, one moment bonding with his daughter over some fatherly advice while in the next having bananas chucked at his chest. Seeing him try his best to make sense of that elusive thing known as the female teenage brain is pretty hilarious.
Mostly (no offense ladies), this movie made me glad that I have boys instead of girls.
Grade: A