Most Terrifying Movie Title Ever

Eighth Grade a film by Bo Burnham.  With Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan.  *****

By some weird coincidence, in the past two weeks I have watched two movies about single fathers raising thirteen-year-old daughters.  I think these are the only two such movies I’ve ever seen in my life.  And though I absolutely loved the first movie, and thought it might be the best movie of the year, I looked at my wife after this one and said, “That’s the real thirteen-year-old.”  There’s something satisfying about seeing the real thing.[1]

Many aspects of the eighth grade experience are universal, but the first thing we notice in this movie is the differences, and every one of them makes the experience more difficult.  Everyone, but everyone, is constantly glued to their i-phones, so no matter who you’re talking to, you’re more or less on a split screen.  Our protagonist, Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) makes a series of self-help videos, in which she’s talking to herself as much as to anyone else, and no one, but no one, seems to look at them.  When I published my first story in the school literary magazine, probably nobody read it either, but I didn’t know.  The number of hits didn’t sit there on the Internet, staring at me.

Kayla has a mild case of acne—if any case for a teenager can possibly be mild—and her body is still pudgy and nondescript, but she’s a pretty girl, and obviously smart, though we know nothing about how she’s doing in school.  What we do know is that she’s not one of the cool girls—those would be Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere) and her sidekick—but being cool comes with such an impossible load of catiness and bitchiness that we wouldn’t wish it on anybody.  Naturally, the guy Kayla has a crush on is one of the cool ones, a slit-eyed thirteen-year-old-going-on-nineteen named Aiden (Luke Prael)—and he actually isn’t mean to her, unlike the girls.  He’s nice when he talks to her, or at least he’s neutral.  Almost nobody in this age group is warm and friendly, though Kayla’s in there trying.

That points to to another big difference.  Aiden broke up with his previous girlfriend because she wouldn’t send him dirty pictures of herself, and Kayla—having heard this—lets him know she has some pretty hot stuff (though she doesn’t), and might be willing to send it.  He’s more than interested once he hears that.  His next question: “Do you do blow jobs?”

So I suppose I led the most sheltered existence of all time, and the year I was in eighth grade was 1961.  But a kiss in those days (I did have my first kiss in eighth grade, and it was memorable beyond belief.  I can still feel it) was the lips pressing together, no tongue, and that was as far as things went, with everyone I knew.  Dirty pictures were what you tried to get in a magazine you bought at a news stand, and were probably turned down, because the guy could get in trouble selling to underage kids.[2]  As for a blow job, I barely knew what one was.  It would never have occurred to me to ask a girl if she did it.

What I’m saying is that there seems to be much more pressure on young people these days, boys and girls.  Aiden can ask for these things (of course he wants them.  He’s a guy), and a girl can feel pressure to deliver on them, and actually, Kayla can go back to her computer—as she does—and get a lesson on how to give a good blow job.  She has all kinds of great porn stars to help her.  And in sex ed, she’s watching a film in which an attractive female sex educator is talking about the hair “down there.”  I’m just surprised she didn’t say “on your little dicks and cunts.”

So there is lots to identify with in this movie and lots to shake your head at with incredulity; my wife and I just finished watching the rather violent Netflix series called Fauda, but during the scene in which Kayla had to change into her bathing suit in the bathroom, then walk through the house in her suit to go out to a pool party at one of the cool girl’s houses, I thought to myself, This is more terrifying than anything that happened in Fauda.  It is in the pool that she briefly meets a guy who is more her speed than Aiden, though she doesn’t realize it at the time, the delightful Gabe (Jake Ryan).  His best moments come later.

I haven’t even mentioned the extraordinarily painful—but obviously authentic—scenes between Kayla and her father (Josh Hamilton).  The days when we all had to sit straight in our chairs at the table and eat politely and make conversation are long gone; this family has one day a week when Kayla’s allowed to have her phone at dinner, and she shuts her father out completely.  He’s trying to be a good father, to be cool, to speak her language and affirm her, to let her know what an extraordinary girl she is—though she’s completely ordinary, she is extraordinary—and fails utterly, until a scene near the very end.  His job is hopeless.  It does make one wonder, again, about the effortless job of raising a girl that the father had in Leave No Trace.  All we see is the results, and it doesn’t seem to have been painful at all.  He wasn’t contending with an I-phone, of course.  And if he’d abandoned his daughter, she’d have been alone in the wilderness.

Eighth Grade is a funny movie, but it’s also deeply true, and real, and often painful.  It doesn’t play for the cheap laughs—which it easily could have—but for the rueful laughs that come because we identify and understand.  I’m not saying now that this is the best movie of the year.  I don’t want to sound too much like an airhead.  But in a way I admire it more than the other one.

[1] That brings up the whole issue of age in movies.  Thomasin McKenzie, who played Thom in Leave No Trace, is actually eighteen.  She’s slight and willowy and was completely convincing as a precocious and athletic thirteen-year-old—I taught that age for six years, and there’s huge variation in the way girls look—but she wasn’t really thirteen.  You suspected that the whole time you were watching.  Elsie Fisher, on the other hand, just finished eighth grade.

[2] The one exception was a place in Oakland (a Pittsburgh neighborhood) called Gus Miller’s.  The word was that you could buy Playboy there.  You could also play the numbers at Gus’ place. I think he had an agreement with the police.