Senior Year
NETFLIXWorryingly little progress has been made when it comes to the coming-of-age banality. It is now so clear that these features will do little to actually show the subgenre as an acknowledgement of growth as a person. There is a direct disassociation for Senior Year, which enlists Rebel Wilson for a unique setting to do nothing more than tee up an awful message portrayed by idealistic characters. There is no need to decry the lack of realism for a comatose teenager to wake up some decades later and come to terms with their aged looks and lack of growth as a person. But seeing it up close in Senior Year, really actively following the interests of these characters, is surprisingly pathetic.
Another feature for Wilson to toil away in, and it feels awfully similar to Isn’t It Romantic, primarily because most of the film appears to take place in Wilson’s head. It is a borderline ego trip, for Wilson to portray a character that seemingly has little education because most of her days were spent in a hospital bed out for the count. The championing of that and the subsequent cash-in on the premise is so poor, so strangely distasteful, that Senior Year has no bargaining power for audiences. There is nothing that any reasonable movie-goer could enjoy in here because of how generic, how static it is. White noise put to film, and most of it is whiny and dull. Somehow, Wilson brushing shoulders with nobody and saying nothing of note is uninteresting. Funny how that works.
What isn’t funny though is Senior Year. Dark days ahead for the Netflix powerhouse if this is the sort of content they hope to bank on. Wilson still has the star power needed to carry a project like this one from director Alex Hardcastle, but the lack of inspiration behind even the simplest of moments is the death knell for Senior Year. Not the greatest way to debut, but there is no doubt Hardcastle can learn from the usual suspects of this comedic troupe, which naturally features Chris Parnell. A firm hand for the genre despite appearing in very little quality, Senior Year is another damp and fluttering comedy that Netflix hopes will somehow, somewhere, capitalise on the few qualities yet to be unearthed by the school dramas and jealous in-fighting that plagues these characters.
Now it is time for those key themes to plague the audience, though. As disparate and underwhelming Senior Year is, there is a notable swiftness to how it hits all the expected notes of its genre. It rattles through like it has a plan, but the only plan present appears to be the checking of mundane boxes that slide Senior Year into that light comedy category. Box-checking filmmaking with a twist handled so poorly that it became the focus of the feature and the marketing strategy. It may have worked had it been revealed as a sudden surprise to throw at the audience, but it’s less 17 Again and more Tall Girl for this miserable attempt at innovating a dead sub-genre.