Senior Year aims to be a farce about the differences between high school now and high school in the 2000’s. Unfortunately, the film, written by Arthur Pielli and directed by Alex Hardcastle, is more like high school in the movies.
The story about Stephanie (Rebel Wilson), a blonde cheerleader, and her experience is fairly straightforward by cinema standards — she falls for a football player, wants to be a prom queen and hits her head and slips into a coma. Now she has to go back to school at 37 (like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School) and convince everyone she’s still the coolest chick on campus (like Cher Horowitz in Clueless). While this would never happen in real life, there’s more movies than we can count that center on this exact same premise.
Everything that happens is rote and predictable, from the groan-worthy references to the Yearbook quote platitudes, it’s color-by-the-numbers comedy that’s flat. The only thing interesting about Senior Year is how it tries to teach us a lesson on the setbacks of popularity yet does everything it can to be popular on Netflix. There’s no personality here — it’s just another “dumb blonde” trying to fit in.
The Dove Take
This is one of those movies I really wanted to like — it’s got a great message about being yourself and not sacrificing your quirks to fit in — but there are just too many crude jokes and rehashed plot points that ruin the positive feedback.
