By Robert Yaniz Jr.

DAY 21 OF THE 2018 HOLIDAY BINGE

Comedian Bo Burnham channels his inner teenage girl with this painfully awkward, brilliant drama.

THE HYPE

John Hughes may have created the modern cinematic template for the teenage experience, but even so, his films always had an air of fabrication to them. Certainly, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off have truth within them. Yet, they and so many of their successors bear a stylized aesthetic that creates a safety net of fiction around what adolescence really is. With his debut feature, comedian Bo Burnham aims to strip that away and tap into the truth that all teenagers discover: how much it sucks to grow up.

THE STORY

Elsie Fisher — previously best known as the voice of Agnes (“IT’S SO FLUFFY!”) in the first two Despicable Me films — plays Kayla Day,  an average teen wrapping up her final days in middle school. The plot of Eighth Grade, such as it is, focuses on Kayla’s transition into and preparation for high school. Really, this life event is emblematic of adolescence as a whole, however, as Kayla is ultimately trapped between the last vestiges of her childhood and the prospect of deciding the kind of young woman she wants to be.

THE CAST

Fisher is beyond outstanding in the role. Whether she’s navigating a party or filming one of her life-advice YouTube videos, she nails the universal feeling that all teens feel out of place in their own skin. Even when viewers know that Kayla is making a poor decision, we never lose sight of the pressure she’s under as well as her apparent inability to connect with her father (Josh Hamilton). Both actors maintain the no-frills, bare-bones feel of growing up and/or raising a teen and should be earning more awards attention.

THE PRODUCTION

Against all odds, Burnham has created one of the best debut features in recent memory. His script perfectly balances the timeless anxiety of being a teenager or any gender with the challenges today’s youth face in the age of social media. Along the way, the score by Anna Meredith emphasizes Kayla’s hopefulness and isolation in equal measure, and the film’s brisk pace and efficient storytelling allow it to pack more emotional punch in just 93 minutes than many of its recent forebears in the coming-of-age genre.

THE VERDICT

Seeing as Eighth Grade is the third and final father-daughter film of the 2018 Holiday Binge, it’s fitting that Burnham’s film is easily the best of the bunch. No matter when audiences grew up or what the circumstances were therein, Eighth Grade speaks to it. As teens, the world feels like it’s riding on every little social cue, and Burnham draws a direct line from the innocence we lose as we grow up and the promise of something better on the other side of this chaotic mess known as adolescence. Easily one of the year’s best films.

Eighth Grade stars Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan and Fred Hechinger and is directed by Bo Burnham.