 |
| Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade |
In the opening scene of director Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade, Kayla (Elsie Fisher) stares into the camera, distorting her image with pixelation as she espouses tips on how to be a better person. But here's the question: how does a middle-class, socially awkward kid know what's best for the world? Throughout the course of the comedy, there's an exploration of self that delves into the typical awkward phases of childhood, especially on the cusp of the highly romanticized high school years, and wonders how anyone knows anything. With the adults poorly using contemporary slang such as "lit" and "dabbing," the film already feels like a miscommunication, that nobody could understand Kayla. So how then can she expect people to understand her views on how to be a confident person through YouTube videos, of which reach a tragically low amount of people? The answer is one of the most painstaking, honest, and funny comedies of the summer that finds a way to take characters who do nothing but look at phones and find their inner humanity.
