History Film / Booksmart

* StrawFeminist: Discussed, and explored. Amy, and ''especially'' Molly, are culturally-savvy, mainstream-leftist girls in the vein of Hillary Clinton's supporters, and reference everything from [=#MeToo=] to various waves of feminism. Amy and (again, ''especially'') Molly also have their heads stuck up their ass about it (Amy's planning to spend the summer in Botswana (a country in a continent that isn't known for its progressiveness) to teach women to make their own tampons and Molly's speech is a generic call to action against straight white men) ''and'' are hypocritical (Molly joining in the gossiping against "Roadside Assistance" for "sucking off three guys"). However, much of the film shows that the girls mean well, and it's made clear the message is not "feminism is negative", but "being progressive does not absolve you of your personal failings".

* RealityEnsues:
** When Amy and Molly try to "mug" a pizza delivery man of an address, they fashion their hair into balaclava-like masks and scream demands at him from his back seat, expecting him to surrender. Instead, the plan immediately falls apart when the he angrily points out that they don't have a weapon, meaning that ''he's'' the one in control.
** Amy and [[spoiler:Hope’s make out/sex scene is portrayed as incredibly awkward, due to it being Amy’s (and possibly Hope's, though it's unclear) first time. She has a hard time taking off Hope's tight jeans and shoes and puts her finger into “the wrong hole”]].
** Amy accidentally drinks from a cup filled with used cigarettes. She ends up vomiting not long after consuming the sickly beverage.
** Amy and Molly take a long time to reach Nick's party because they don't know where he lives - Amy even points out they never talk to most of the other people in their grade unless it's for scholastic purposes[[note]]When we get a look at Molly's phone, all the contacts have full names AND the class she has with them[[/note]].
** At the same time the film averts this trope: Many guests post from the party on social media, but they all carefully avoid those platforms that would also transmit the location.
** Using her phone to watch porn in the taxi means that Molly runs out of battery far quicker than she would have normally, which she discovers just after Amy leaves hers behind.
** Molly kept quiet about her crush on [[spoiler: Nick]] because she hates having feelings for a popular DumbJock and says there's no way a guy like him would be interested in her.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''{{Film/Superbad}}''. Both movies involve two high school friends attending a party to get attention from their crushes, and the course of a single day. Molly, played by Beanie Feldstein, is the successor to Seth, played by Beanie's older brother, Creator/JonahHill. The meeker Amy is the successor to Evan. However, ''Booksmart'' fleshes out its side characters more and has generally been better received by critics, [[AcclaimedFlop though also proved far less successful at the box office]].

* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''{{Film/Superbad}}''. Both movies involve two high school friends attending a party to get attention from their crushes, and the course of a single day. Molly, played by Beanie Feldstein, is the successor to Seth, played by Creator/JonahHill, Beanie's old brother. The meeker Amy is the successor to Evan. However, ''Booksmart'' fleshes out its side characters more and has generally been better received by critics, [[AcclaimedFlop though also proved far less successful at the box office]].

* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''{{Film/Superbad}}''. Both movies involve two high school friends attending a party to get attention from their crushes, and the course of a single day. Molly, played by Beanie Feldstein, is the successor to Seth, played by Creator/JonahHill, Beanie's old brother. The meeker Amy is the successor to Evan. However, ''Booksmart'' fleshes out its side characters more and has generally been better received.

* BrokenAesop: The movie is correct that academic achievements aren't everything and that Molly and Amy are using their intelligence and academic success as shields. However, demonstrating this by placing them in what appears to be a ''very'' wealthy environment and having ''all'' of the other characters go to extremely prestigious schools, seems very out of touch with academic and financial pressures facing a lot of other high school students. It's less impressive that someone like Gigi got into Harvard if, as it appears, she is extremely wealthy, and it mostly suggests that college is still ''extremely'' important, it's just more about the pressure to do everything.

* BreakTheHaughty: Molly gets it early in the movie when she hears her classmates trash-talking her and discovers that for all her intelligence, her classmates got into the good schools as well and her sense of superiority quickly crumbles when she realizes she sacrificed having fun for future success while others were able to do both.

* ExtremeDoormat: Amy goes along with whatever Molly decides, even when she doesn't want to. This ends up triggering their big fight when Amy wants to leave the party but Molly refuses to do so.

* IvyLeagueForEveryone: Molly is going to Yale and Amy is going to Columbia, and when Molly asks her classmates about their post graduation plans, they involve (also) going to Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and a lucrative programming job at Google. Even CloudCuckooLander Gigi guiltily states she's going to her "fifth choice", Harvard. It's a plot point that Molly assumed everyone else were underachievers because they had active social lives.

* Safeword: The protagonists get about one “Malala” per year that obligates the other to go along with whatever they have planned. Molly ignoring this leads to an explosive fight.

* ArmorPiercingResponse: Molly attempts a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech when she overhears three students making fun of her by means of highlight what a bright future she has ahead of her. Unfortunately all three students have equally bright futures despite not being nearly as dedicated to their schoolwork as her.

* StrawFeminist: Discussed, and explored. Amy, and ''especially'' Molly, are culturally-savvy, mainstream-leftist girls in the vein of Hillary Clinton's supporters, and reference everything from [=#MeToo=] to various waves of feminism. Amy (and, again, ''especially'') Molly also have their heads stuck up their ass about it (Amy's planning to spend the summer in Botswana (a country in a continent that isn't known for its progressiveness) to teach women to make their own tampons and Molly's speech is a generic call to action against straight white men) ''and'' are hypocritical (Molly joining in the gossiping against "Roadside Assistance" for "sucking off three guys"). However, much of the film shows that the girls mean well, and it's made clear the message is not "feminism is negative", but "being progressive does not absolve you of your personal failings".

* RightForTheWrongReasons: Late in the film Annabelle (AKA "Triple A")[[spoiler:states she did, indeed, suck off three guys after their car broke down, but because the car is the best place high school students have to have sex, not because the car broke down]].

* NoodleIncident: Ms. Fine did something so heinous in her twenties that she is banned from every Jamba Juice in the country.

* NoAntagonist: No one is actually trying to stop Amy and Molly from achieving their objectives, and whenever they end up running into other people from their high school they're almost universally friendly. The only people who are even mean to them at any point are the trio mocking Molly behind her back in the beginning and Hope, but the two guys are still incredibly excited to see Molly and Amy at the party later, Molly reconciles with Annabelle/Triple A, and Amy even gets to know Hope a bit better by the end as well. In fact, the only "bad" person in the whole film is still (relatively, given the situation) nice to them,: [[spoiler:the serial killer pizza man who's car they break into. He warns them not to put themselves in dangerous situation with strangers]].

** Amy and Molly are riding in a Lyft with Principal Brown as their driver, working his second job and trying to be not only a ReasonableAuthorityFigure but a cool one. They are watching lesbian porn on Molly's phone and listening to it on headphones, so that Amy knows (in theory) what to do if she manages to hook up with Ryan. Molly's phone is running low in charge, so Principal Brown lets her plug into his car charger. All goes well until Principal Brown thinks that they are listening to music and goes to put it on the car stereo--the result is several seconds of very loud wet flapping sounds and a breathy voice panting "Oh yeah..." while Molly and Amy desperately try to turn the phone off. When there's finally silence, Principal Brown unsuccessfully attempts to break the awkwardness:

* GirlsLoveStuffedAnimals: Amy has several of them in her bedroom...one of which she admits to humping.

* ClusterFBomb: Not a huge surprise considering the majority of the characters are highschool age, there's a good deal of swearing throughout. The final scene in particular, after Amy [[spoiler:ruins their dramatic goodbye by jumping in front of Mollys car]] the pair drop a dozen or so F-bombs in the closing few seconds.

* CringeComedy: There are at least a few moments in the move, such as Amy and Molly's teacher accidentally overhearing them listening to porn, or Amy's mother kissing her toy panda...that she regularly uses to masturbate.
* CoolTeacher: Deconstructed with Ms. Fine, who is close with and supportive of Molly and Amy, gives them a ride and a change of clothes when they get stranded, and even attends the WildTeenParty. She does this because she clearly feels dissatisfied with leaving her younger days behind and tries to reclaim some of it by attending the party, which has some unpleasant consequences when she [[spoiler:hooks up with Theo, her former student]], something she very much regrets doing the next day when she's sobered up.

* ClusterFBomb: Not a huge surprise considering the majority of the characters are highschool age, there's a good deal of swearing throughout. The final scene in particular, after Amy [[spoiler:ruins their dramatic goodbye by jumping in front of Mollys car]] the pair drop a dozen or so F-bombs in the closing few seconds.

* BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults: Molly hears three classmates gossiping about her while in the stall of the school's unisex bathroom, eventually leading to the Amy and Molly going out to party before highschool is over.

* AutoErotica: Annabelle/Triple A admits to sleeping with a bunch of guys in cars because it's practical. Being highschool students who live with their parents, a car is one of the few places they can get relative privacy.

--->'''Molly:''' But...you don't care about school.

* ShipperOnDeck: Molly tries to encourage Amy to talk to Ryan, but with very mixed results.

* AdultFear: Discussed extensively by the pizza delivery guy when Amy and Molly try harassing him for information. Once he figures out how young they are he points out the stupidity of getting into a stranger's car, even producing a gun he carries for protection and [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial explaining what he could do to them in return]] before kicking them out. [[spoiler: He later turns out to be a genuine serial killer with a wanted poster at the police station]].
* AloofDarkHairedGirl: Hope is tall, brunette and very standoffish, making a few cutting comments about Amy's behavior. She's also the only classmate who rebuffs Molly's demand to know where everyone is going to college. [[spoiler:Amy manages to melt some of her icy aloofness]].

** Gigi is so off the rails the entire movie it's hard to get any lock on her sexuality, but she did show an odd attachment to Amy early on.
** Amy is frustrated by her inability to figure out whether Ryan is into girls. At the party, Ryan seems to be romantically interested in Amy, but later [[spoiler:she starts making out with Nick]]. It's never revealed whether Ryan is bi or just heterosexual.
* ArmorPiercingResponse: When Molly attempts a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech at the three students she overhears trash talking her, Annabelle has a response that brings her up short.

* AutoErotica: Annabelle/Triple A admits to sleeping with a bunch of guys in cars because it's practical.

* BadLiar: Amy is a self-confessed terrible liar - when Jared weirds them out when giving her and Molly a lift, she starts making up a ridiculous story about needing to leave because their friend hit a possum. She even asks Molly to lie to her parents for her about sleeping over at her house because she feels bad and gives herself away.
* BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults: Molly hears three classmates gossiping about her while in the stall of the school's unisex bathroom. This instigates the plot.

* BerserkButton: Gigi doesn't like it if you talk shit about her friends - Jared mentions that Gigi once tried to shank a mailman for laughing at him (he wasn't - he was looking at cat memes), and we see he isn't exaggerating earlier in the movie when she thinks a waiter is making fun of Amy, she grabs a champagne bottle and smashes it to threaten him with. (She was drunk at the time and Amy lampshades that they barely know each other, but still.)
* BigDamnKiss: Happens between [[spoiler:Hope]] and [[spoiler:Amy]] during in their bathroom encounter. [[spoiler:Molly]] and [[spoiler:Jared]] also shares one during graduation, which is met by cheers from their fellow students.
* BlackComedyBurst: In a film free of violence and death, the girls' run-in with the pizza guy who begins getting [[BlackComedyRape really specific about what he could do to them]] (and his gun) stands out. Later, [[spoiler:it's revealed he's apparently a serial killer, and]] the girls using this knowledge to their advantage is PlayedForLaughs.
* BreakTheHaughty: Molly gets it early in the movie when she hears her classmates trash-talking her and discovers that for all her intelligence, her classmates got into the good schools as well and her sense of superiority quickly crumbles when she realises she sacrificed having fun for proving she's smarter than everyone else.
* BuddyPicture: A rare female version. The focus of the story is on Molly and Amy's relationship.

* CannotSpitItOut: Amy generally has a hard time being forthright about what she wants - she's pretty much incapable of telling her crush Ryan that she likes her, it's partly because she didn't explain to Molly that she saw [[spoiler: Nick and Ryan kissing]] when she wants to leave the party that triggers off their big fight and she only tells Molly the truth about Botswana under extreme duress.
* ChekhovsGag: Molly and Amy's unfamiliarity about lesbian sex becomes an actual plot point when Amy tries to get it on with [[spoiler: Hope]] and makes a mess out of it.

* ChekhovsGunman: The pizza delivery man is [[spoiler:a serial killer, and Molly hands over information about him to get Amy out of jail in the end]].
* CringeComedy: The movie veers into this at times, such as Amy and Molly's teacher accidentally overhearing them listening to porn, or Amy's mother kissing her toy panda...that she regularly uses to masturbate with.
* CoolTeacher: Deconstructed with Ms. Fine, who is close with and supportive of Molly and Amy, gives them a ride and a change of clothes when they get stranded, and even attends the WildTeenParty, but she does this because she clearly feels dissatisfied with leaving her younger days behind and tries to reclaim some of it by attending the party, which has disastrous consequences for her when she gives in to temptation and [[spoiler:and hooks up with Theo, her former student]], something she very much regrets doing the next day when she's sobered up.
* CloudCuckooLander: Gigi is in her own little world, rattling off bizarre comments, taking naps in random places, and acting like Amy and Molly are her best friends even though they've never even spoken to each other until the film. It's possible that some of this is drug and alcohol induced (she does ask for rubbing alcohol at Nick's party because none of the drinks are strong enough) but you get the sense that this is her genuine personality.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Amy and Molly hide in the back of a pizza delivery man's car and try to force him to give them the address of the big party. The man admonishes them on how stupid it is for teen girls to get into a stranger's car, noting that they put more attention on using their hair as disguises than on the potential danger.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: [[spoiler:The Valley Strangler]] seems genuinely concerned at the girls' naivety about StrangerDanger, though we don't know whether this is due to their age or some other reason.
* ExtremeDoormat: Amy tends to go along with whatever Molly decides, even when she doesn't want to. This ends up triggering their big fight when Amy wants to leave the party but Molly refuses to do so.

** There's a lingering shot of Annabelle's ass when she snarkily points out her shorts don't have pockets.

* GoodParents: Amy's parents seem very loving towards their daughter, albeit a bit weirded out when they think she's in a sexual relationship with Molly, but they do their best to be supportive anyway.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Molly identifies herself as a feminist, yet she also engages in casual SlutShaming as she also uses the nickname "Triple A" and is fairly dismissive about Gigi as well. CharacterDevelopment shows her growing out of this and she sincerely apologises to Annabelle over her previous behaviour.

** Gigi is an unpredictable CloudCuckoolander who is also an actress, has an encyclopedic knowledge of various drugs, is ''extremely'' perceptive of everyone's fears and weaknesses, and is shown at graduation to be a piano virtuoso.

** Amy and Molly's idea of having a good time is going to the library. They have fake [=IDs=] just so they can get into UCLA's library.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: Molly seems dismayed when she hallucinates gets a Barbie-doll body, asking, "Where's my chub?" and insisting to Amy that they are better than that, but later admits that "girls like her" (as in, ambitious girls with an alleged "butter-personality") don't get guys like [[spoiler: Nick]], showing that her "empowerment" and go-getter personality really just boils down to bravado to cover up her insecurities. She realises this in herself by the end of the movie and mellows out towards both her peers and herself.

* ItAmusedMe: Molly likes to pretend she and Amy are in a sexual relationship because it weirds out her parents.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Our introduction to Molly involves a mindfulness routine centered around a self-help tape that hearkens the viewer as being better than everyone else, ending on a venomous '''"FUCK THEM."''' She constantly dismisses other classmates as underachivers, lazy assholes, and just plain stupid; the realization that people she'd written off as dolts heading to community college are really getting into universities comparable to her Ivy League shakes her to her core, and triggers the events of the film. [[spoiler:At its climax, she brushes off Amy's "Malala" call as ''Amy'' being selfish and trying to be self-centered. Naturally, the resulting argument has Amy rip her a new one for this.]] In addition, her [[spoiler:pre-prepared and "first"]] speech at the end is an extremely self-important [=#MeToo=]-esque declaration against white men, while completely missing the spirit of the [=#MeToo=] movement.
* IvyLeagueForEveryone: Exaggerated. Molly is going to Yale and Amy is going to Columbia, but Molly discovers that most of her classmates are going to the very top schools in the country, including Gigi, who guiltily states that she's going to Harvard, her "fifth choice." It's a plot point that Molly assumed everyone else were underachievers because they had active social lives.

** Molly angrily points out that if it wasn't for her, Amy would sit around at home and never do anything on her own and calls her a coward. While it was harsh, she's not wrong that Amy's timid nature and how easy it is to boss her around gets her into trouble.

* NoAntagonist: No one is trying to stop Amy and Molly from achieving their objectives. Even the people who are mean to them in the beginning ultimately warm up to them over the course of the film. In fact, the only "bad" person in the whole film gives them important advice: [[spoiler:the serial killer pizza man, who warns them not to put themselves in danger]].

* OffscreenTeleportation: Gigi turns up at all three parties the main duo attends, none the worse for wear despite having jumped into the ocean earlier. They lampshade it by asking her how she even got there.
--> '''Molly:''' How are you ''dry''?

** Molly kept quiet about her crush on [[spoiler: Nick]] because she hates having feelings for a popular DumbJock and says there's no way a guy like him would be interested in her. She's right.
* ReallyGetsAround: Annabelle is called "Triple-A" because of the "roadside assistance" she's provided to many boys in school. She states that, while she has had sex with many guys in cars, it's just a practical place to have sex, there's more to her than her promiscuity.
* RecycledPremise: The broad strokes of the film are a GenderFlip of ''Film/{{Superbad}}'': Two unhip high school kids are about to graduate, so they spend an epic night trying to attend a big house party to meet up with their respective crushes, but ultimately must reconcile with the fact that one of them is departing after graduation and breaking up the friendship. Fittingly, Beanie Feldstein plays the equivalent character her brother Creator/JonahHill plays in ''Superbad''.

* RightForTheWrongReasons: Late in the film, "Roadside Assistance" [[spoiler:states she did, indeed, sucked off three guys after their car broke down, but because the car is a better place to have sex, not because the car broke down]].

* RunningGag: Everywhere Amy and Molly go, Gigi is already there.

* ShutUpHannibal: Amy shuts down Hope's cruel taunts at her ExtremeDoormat behaviour by snapping back that Hope is just a hot girl who has already reached her peak in high school, something that stuns Hope into silence.

* SlutShaming: Annabelle's nickname in school is "Triple A" (for the American Automotive Assistance "AAA" corporation) for offering supposed roadside assistance to a number of guys but [[ReallyGetsAround obviously did more than that]]. She later reveals to Molly how much she hates that nickname, as she genuinely did help them, although it was sexual too. What hurt her most is she expected the guys to catch on to that nickname, but didn't realize how much the girls would do it too.

* StealthHiBye: Gigi has a tendency to do this.
* StepfordSmiler: Jared tries to act positive and upbeat, even though nobody at the school besides Gigi really likes him. He knows it.

* StrawFeminist: Discussed, and explored. Amy, and ''especially'' Molly, are culturally-savvy, mainstream-leftist girls in the vein of Hillary Clinton's supporters, and reference everything from [=#MeToo=] to various waves of feminism. Amy (and, again, ''especially'') Molly also have their heads stuck up their ass about it (Amy's planning to spend the summer in Botswana (a country in a continent that isn't known for its progressiveness) to teach women to make their own tampons and Molly's speech is a generic call to action against straight white men) ''and'' are hypocritical (joining in the gossiping against "Roadside Assistance" for "sucking off three guys"). However, much of the film shows that the girls mean well, and it's made clear the message is not "feminism is negative", but "being progressive does not absolve you of your personal failings".

* WouldntHurtAChild: Implied with [[spoiler: the pizza guy]], as he points out to Amy and Molly after accurately deducing they are underage, that he has a gun and they didn't think their hostage situation through. [[spoiler: Later, it turns out he's a serial killer and could have easily murdered them right there if he wanted to. He even lampshades how somebody could kill them, leave their body under a freeway and they'd be discovered by dogwalkers the next morning.]]

* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: When Molly's crush on [[spoiler: Nick]] is outed by Gigi, she admits to Amy that she knows he's a dumb jock, but she also says she knows he'd never be interested in someone like her. Amy gives her a BrightSlap and tells her she won't tolerate someone talking about her best friend that way.

* IvyLeagueForEveryone: Exaggerated. Molly is going to Yale and Amy is going to Columbia, but Molly discovers that most of her classmates are going to the very top schools in the country, including Gigi who guiltily states that she's going to Harvard, her "fifth choice." It's a plot point that Molly assumed everyone else were underachievers which triggers the events of the movie, their logic is other people partied only to still succeed there was no reason for them not to have fun themselves.

* NoAntagonist: No one is trying to stop Amy and Molly from achieving their objectives. Even the people who are mean to them in the beginning ultimately warm up to them over the course of the film. In fact, the only "bad" person in the whole film gives them useful advice: [[spoiler:the serial killer pizza man, who warns them not to put themselves in danger]].

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Until near the end of the movie, we only know Annabelle as "Triple A".

* RightForTheWrongReasons: Late in the film, "Roadside Assistance" [[spoiler:DOES state she did, indeed, sucked off three guys after their car broke down, but because the car is a better place to have sex. ...and not because the car broke down.]]

* StatuesqueStunner: Hope, played by 5'10½ Diana Silvers.

* {{Tomboy}}: Ryan, a girl with a GenderBlenderName who skateboards everywhere and seems to hang out mostly with guys. Amy had a crush on her, but couldn't figure out what her sexual orientation is until [[spoiler: she saw her and Nick were kissing]]

* ExtremeDoormat: Amy tends to go along with whatever Molly decides, even when she doesn't want to. This ends up triggering off their big fight when Amy wants to leave the party but Molly refuses to do so.