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People are voting emotionally.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Like Jordan Peele and John Krasinski before him, Bo Burnham creates a film that has no business being as great as it was. Eighth Grade is exactly the kind of film John Hughes would make if he were alive today. The actors really shine here. I can't think of even one line that wasn't delivered perfectly, which is even more impressive when you consider the fact that there's only one major adult character, the rest are all kids. Can we attribute that to Burnham's direction or are these actors really that great? Who cares? Neither answer changes the fact that Kayla is more relatable than just about any protagonist in 2018 film as a whole. Equally as impressive is the technical quality of Eighth Grade, which contains some of the best cinematography I've seen all year. Burnham and cinematographer Andrew Wehde seem to have had a lot of fun with this film, throwing in long zooms akin to 70s horror films, dramatic superimposing footage, and a nice mix of dolly work and handheld. The electronica music also fits perfectly with the tone of this film, which is elated and hilarious at its height and absolutely soul crushing at its lowest. All in all, during my screening of Eighth Grade I delighted in and suffered through my fair share of flashbacks to middle school despite having graduated six years before this film is set, which (to me) demonstrates the timelessness and accuracy of the writing and the film as a whole. After discussing this movie with a few friends I decided that I could not find one thing I didn't like about this movie. This is the closest thing I've seen to a perfect movie in a long, long time.

This movie was emotional for me for reasons I'm not sure how to express. It was very relatable and well-made, making you absolutely feel for the protagonist in every way. Everything about it was spot-on to me. It made me cry very hard in the middle, cry in the car, and tear up throughout the day afterwards. It's definitely worth the watch.

Could Bo Burnham, comedian and long-time YouTube internet star, be the next Judd Apatow? With his first feature, Burnham has done his research into the minds and sensibilities of teenagers stuck in that awkward age just after the onset of puberty and before becoming more independent during the heady days of high school. Eighth Grade focuses on his young protagonist, Kayla Day, winningly played by Elsie Fisher, who has been in the acting business since she was five years old. Usually in these coming-of-age stories focusing on school, the protagonist is pitted against a tangible opponent (often a bully) and much of the plot revolves around the conflict between the two. But here Burnham eschews such familiar tropes and hones in on Kayla's internal arc, highlighted by her lack of self-esteem and a journey to assert herself in a world which relies on social media to establish one's social cred. Kayla is raised by a single parent father, Mark, who thinks the world of her but has difficulty communicating with his daughter as Kayla often feels embarrassed by his awkward entreaties. Instead she holes herself up in her room, creating motivational videos, which she posts on the internet but no one listens to. The videos are actually quite prescient and suggest she has a lot more on the ball than what her classmates give her credit for (she's voted "Most quiet" in an awards ceremony at school at the beginning of the film). Indeed it's Burnham's sharp observations about student life that lift this film way above the clichés of the genre. In addition to the offbeat awards ceremony just alluded to, there are a slew of neat, unexpected activities at the school we're introduced to. For example the students open up "time capsules" which they made on their first day at middle school. Now they watch their younger selves speaking to their older counterparts, wishing them good luck on their impending graduation and entrance into high school (at film's end, Kayla creates a new "time capsule," wishing her good luck on her next foray into college). More unusual and compelling stuff: students undergoing a drill, where a teacher is dressed up as a school mass killer and instructed how to react if such a deadly situation arises (a sorry commentary on the state of affairs in this country at the present time!). Later, the eighth graders are paired up with high school students for a day at the local high school where they gain some valuable "experience" in what to expect when they begin attending in the fall. Eighth grade is not plot heavy and depends on a series of vignettes that chart the protagonist's journey. Kayla is invited to the birthday pool party of a girl whom has snubbed her in school, but attends at the behest of the rival's mother. There she confronts Aiden, a boy she has a crush on, offering to send him nude pictures of herself. The boy counters by asking her if she knows how to give oral sex. This then results in Kayla's desire to educate herself on the subject by watching explicit online videos as well as practicing with a banana (practice which fails to come to fruition, after she's interrupted by her father). The second act dark moment arrives after Kayla hooks up with Olivia, the high school student she was paired up with at school. Burnham smartly contrasts the older teenagers' more sophisticated banter with some of the more monosyllabic utterances of the younger crowd Kayla has been interacting with earlier. In perhaps the most harrowing scene in the film (which hardly should be called harrowing), Kayla gets a ride home with Olivia's friend Riley, one of the older high school students, who parks his car, gets in the back seat with Olivia and begins playing a game of "truth or dare." He gets as far as taking his shirt off when Kayla makes it clear that she wants him to stop and drive her home. Fortunately there are no real tragic moments in the film but it's a learning moment for Kayla, who finally pours out her heart to her father, after the traumatic event. If there is one flaw to this film, Burnham has some trouble wrapping things up. There's the overly sentimental scene involving the embrace between father and daughter as well as Kayla rather abruptly effecting her comeuppance of Kennedy, whom she bluntly tells off in the school hallway, right before film's end (maybe not the best way to demonstrate how she's found her confidence). It's Burnham's observational skills about today's environment permeated by social media, as well as the psychology of the teenage mind, that prove he is a talent to be reckoned with. In addition, with his adroit use of social media and overall clever cinematography (not to mention the great use of music to enhance the drama), Burnham has already positioned himself as a major force in the cinematic world today.

As a fan of Bo Burnham since he was posting rap songs on YouTube, I am proud to say he made a pretty solid directorial debut with Eighth Grade. Firstly, as anticipated, this movie is hilarious as hell, and the comedy written in is quite smart as well. And even though the comedy is sharp and witty and IMDb classifies this film as a comedy, I don't think Bo's intentions were to make the audience guffaw. To me, it felt more like a drama with comedic elements thrown in, and I really like that decision. It gave the appearance that he had a message to get across to any struggling eighth grader out there, or even any sort of adult because the theme is quite universal (and kind of trite in the way he portrayed it, but I'll discuss that later), that hope always lays on the horizon, and I'm glad that he was passionate enough about this message that he didn't want to smother it in comedy, even though he could have done so quite easily. While I'm praising the writing, I ought to applaud Bo on the fact that he has a really good eye for watching and scribing how people interact, and teens of this age are so complex to write, especially of this age, it's honestly a miracle he was able to portray them this accurately and consistently for the entire movie. Like I worked at a Boy Scout summer camp for the entirety of this summer and by being around kids this age for like two months, I can say he really hit the nail on the head with how they act - the memes, the social media, the cliques, all of it. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie is seen as a sort of time capsule of this era for future generations, similar to what Dazed and Confused is today. But regardless of all the trends that will inevitably pass, the relatability of blossoming human emotions at this age, and coping with who you want to be in life is explored beautifully and will definitely stand the test of time. I definitely felt for Elsie Fisher, who plays Kayla Day, the eponymous eighth grader of the film, and does an amazing job for such a young actress, as she stood in the bathroom working up the courage to enter a party of strangers who thought she was weird. Or as she called to have her dad pick her up early. Or as she explored crushes, and her boundaries in an incredibly frightening scene towards the end of the movie. (I'd like to address this scene as I felt it was incredibly well done and made me feel super anxious as I'm sure Kayla felt in the moment. But the downside is that its inclusion confused me a little bit? I'm sure it happens in life, but if you take the scene completely out of the movie, it doesn't affect anything, which it definitely would have in real life. This is the one major pit fall in the writing.) Generally just the sense of trying to fit in. And while the film was enjoyable while it explored this theme, it did it in a very lowest common denominator way which was quite disappointing. I found that even though this movie was only an hour and a half long, it started really dragging at some point because there were so many scenes I had seen a million times and the end was so predictable. And compounding on that, the shot composition of the film was quite bland too and that likely contributed as well because the visual department was lacking. Swiss Army Man from 2016 explored many of the same themes of self-discovery in a much more interesting way and it ended up becoming one of my favorites from that year. It's a fine line that needs walked when handling a message that's been used since Shakespeare ("Above all, to thine own self, be true."). And that's a little disappointing coming from Bo Burnham because I know what he's capable of and I feel like he could have done so much more with this movie. But maybe I'm expecting too much out of his debut because it really isn't that bad. I hope he learns a lot from this movie and perfects his craft in the time in between his next movie. Watching him evolve and accomplish so much at such a young age is incredibly inspiring and I can't wait to see what Bo does next!