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High School drama doesn't get more intriguing than Senior Year. Netflix's recent release doesn't take too long to lay out its bizarre premise. The film is centered around the cliched figure of a popular high school cheerleader, Stephanie. But the only twist is that our protagonist one day wakes up to find that she has aged 20 years.
Stephanie wakes up from a two-decade-long coma in hopes of picking up from right where she left. She aspires to finish high school and chart out her ideal life by marrying the most popular boy in class to find her sweet suburban happiness. But little does she know what her plan holds for her.
A bizarre comedy called Senior Year
After moving to the United States from Australia, Stephanie is a high-school cheerleader who left no stone unturned to become the most popular girl in school. From driving a red convertible Cabriolet to dating a popular athlete and getting named the leading cheerleader, a teenage Stephenie had everything in order until tragedy struck and our protagonist found herself in a hospital bed in a coma.
While aspiring to be like one of the sparky high school comedies, a genre that gained popularity in the early 2000s, Senior Year falls short and proves to be unfulfilling. Times have changed, and so has high school culture. The amalgamation of the high school in Stephanie's mind and its reality is shaky at best in Senior Year.
Stephanie is a millennial who is aghast to discover that her Gen Z classmates have a different value system from hers. The cultural shifts uproot all of Stephanie’s notions, and she is left to embrace the new system while fighting to bring back the fashion she knew.
The new system embraces diversity, frowns upon hierarchy, and adopts a more sensitive outlook of the world, all of which our protagonist finds alien. Her whole identity seems destabilized when she realizes that the cheer squad still exists but under different circumstances. Instead of the alluring song and dance number, it is now more about spreading awareness, a concept new to Stephanie.
Misplaced humor
Senior Year aspires to be both sweet and salty but is neither. With R-rated jokes and a weak tone of humor, the film is shallow. The most profound dialogue is probably between Stephanie and her idol, but that too is nothing better than a cliched pretense.
It wouldn't be wrong to accuse the film of trying to overwhelm the audience born in the 2000s with an overdose of nostalgia, especially with the scene where Wilson’s character re-enacts the video to Britney’s 1999 hit Crazy. The film tries to milk out substance from its paper-thin plot by exploiting popular cultural references and struggles to hold the movie together.
The movie is a stretch, simplistic in execution, and has poorly drawn characters. It is a shame that Senior Year did not take full advantage of the plot. Only with a bit of expertise and drive could the film have turned into something that would have been far more meaningful, maybe even radical.
But this is not to say that the movie is unwatchable. The drama and comedy make for a light weekend watch. Catch Senior Year now on Netflix for some Rebel Wilson action.
