How would you like to wake up from a coma and discover you’re now Rebel Wilson? Would it horrify you, as it does Stephanie (Angourie Rice pre-coma, Rebel Wilson post-coma)? It would certainly shock me enough not to pursue resuming exactly where I left off, but I suppose that’s just one of 150,000 reasons why this film ain’t for me.
I don’t understand how Stephanie has any friends. No, I suppose she’s not deliberately mean to anybody. But the Australian-accented personification of “vapid” doesn’t treat anybody well. She’s vain, entirely self-centered, and presently incapable of considering a POV that is not her own.
Naturally, she’s a cheerleader. Nay, a cheer captain. And one fateful pep rally later, her squad fails to catch her leap and Stephanie winds up in a twenty-year coma. Now, because this is a movie –and not a terribly good one at that- there is no accounting for science or logic or any of those, you know, “real life” things. So we’re just going to assume that twenty years later, Stephanie has transformed into Rebel Wilson, but everything about her recovery is perfectly fine.
And guess what? Stephanie woke up just in time to re-live her last month of high school. Wow. Can you imagine being in a coma, waking up, and wanting to go back to high school? That fits my standard definition of insanity. Reliving Senior Year is, alternatively, this film’s title and plot. And Stephanie is ready to claw her way back to prom queen status even if it makes no sense … and the school no loger has a prom queen.
That, I’m guessing, is the “joy” of Senior Year: Stephanie, now verging on middle age but with the mind of a shallow teen, relives her glory hole years … or at least her glory hole month until graduation. And twenty years of fads, music, and cultural change ain’t gonna stop her.
Yeah, this film doesn’t work. It’s not just an unpolished “fish-out-of-water” scenario, it’s kind of a tired one. And whatever laughs are to be had in realizing teenagerdom has evolved beyond using “gay” as an insult or engineering pointless popularity contests isn’t nearly as sharp as it needs to be … even for a MAGA crowd. And taking a vapid teen and aging her into a vapid thirtysomething isn’t nearly as funny as the producers imagined.
For a minute, I’d like to discuss physical appearance. I like to think my blog usually avoids such discussions as they are, quite frankly, irrelevant. IMHO, how you look isn’t half as important as how you feel about how you look. Acting is the art of making that distinction and making it for the world to see.
That said, I’d like to discuss the curious case of Rebel.
Rebel Wilson has lost 77 pounds since COVID began. I’m of a mixed mind about said fact. On the one hand, YAY, REBEL!! GO REBEL, GO!! I’m a big fan of anybody who is serious about
self-improvement and being that I like Rebel Wilson, hey, double win. OTOH, Rebel Wilson is an iconic actress. And she’s iconic almost entirely for ability to change the narrative on image. She has made no bones (to coin a phrase) about being overweight, and her acting suggests not only that it’s not a problem, but that it’s our problem for pretending we need to treat her differently. In effect, her acting has said: “I know the limitations society places on me because of what I look like, but that won’t alter my choices.” In other words: “I don’t give a f***.”
I’ve loved Rebel for that. More power to you, Rebel Wilson.
But what do we do now with “thin Rebel,” the actress who is no longer obese, especially by American standards? She no longer gets to play the “I’m overweight, so what? F*** you” card. And she’s no longer iconic for being overweight; she might be iconic for losing weight, which is a different appeal. It’s body positive in one sense and exactly the opposite in another.
I want to say it shouldn’t matter, but it does. And now, I find myself counting much more on her ability to be funny without playing off her image. The woman is funny, so I don’t doubt she can climb this particular mountain. Senior Year, however, saw very little ascension.
Relying on some tired comic saws
Ms. Wilson playing a teen gives me pause
This actress got thinner
Did it make her a winner …
Or just a Rebel without an obesity clause?
Rated R, 111 Minutes
Director: Alex Hardcastle
Writer: Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli, Brandon Scott Jones
Genre: Fish out of water
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Adults desperate to re-live high school
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Their children
