‘Senior Year’ movie review: Rebel Wilson struggles to save Netflix high school comfort flick
The Hindu
Despite assembling all the right ingredients, any attempt at a saccharine piece of media is thwarted by a plot that is more confused than its protagonist
Netflix’s latest film Senior Year attempts to pay homage to the genre-defining high school rom-coms of the 2000s. Unfortunately, this tribute does little justice to its predecessors and much like its protagonist Stephanie Conway, the film gets lost in its struggle to juggle the present and the past.
A fish out of water, Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) is a heroine we would have loved to feel sorry for. After moving to America from Australia, a teenage Stephanie, with the help of trusty magazine articles and a pin-board to visualise her goals, quickly ascends to the top of the high school social order. This all comes crashing down when a particularly bad accident, during her cheerleading routine, leaves her comatose... right before prom.
Skipping forward 20 years, a 37-year-old Stephanie (now played by Rebel Wilson) miraculously wakes up from the coma to find that while she has aged physically, “mentally she’s still 17”. She then starts off on her mission to return to high school, graduate and win the title of prom queen.
However, the clock has been reset, and as a middle-aged woman, Stephanie is no longer Queen B. A second makeover ensues as she now navigates the new age of social media-fuelled popularity. Throughout this process, she is supported by her father (Chris Parnell), and her childhood friends, Martha (Mary Holland) and Seth (Sam Richardson), who now work at the school.
With colourful visual aesthetics, and a soundtrack featuring Avril Lavigne, Mandy Moore and Fort Minor, Senior Year starts off as a curious time capsule that we have stumbled upon 20 years later. For a moment, it even encourages suspension of disbelief.
However, the cracks start to appear when the film’s plotline falls prey to the expected chiding of the “woke” Gen Z.
Films like 13 Going on 30 that have followed a similar premise found the comedy in details, with Jennifer Garner stumbling around in her apartment. In contrast, Senior Year, rushes past many such moments that could have lent it the lightness that it needed to stay afloat. Stephanie is shown to be confused by the concept of selfies and social media, but is barely given an explanation before she herself becomes an influencer.
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