Pluskylang Great Film overall

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

pamma09 I am a grandmother and my kids did not have the social media issues that kids have not. I really think this was a fair presentation of what life is like for so many kids not. Kayla is not one of the popular girls - she does a video on things that interest her and has a few followers. She is trying to boost her self esteem and that is so true to life. The whole film is from Kayla's viewpoint, her reactions to friends and non-friends is so real. The pay attention to me but don't pay attention to me is so well shown. The relationship between father and daughter is beautiful and real. Elsie Fisher is so perfect for this role. Bo Burnham succeeds in his first writing and directing - can't wait to see what else he does. Thank you for making this such an honest film.

hollowpirapple Holy hell this movie will dig deep into every insecurity you've ever had, and make you remember all of it. The movie makes you remember what it was like to attend middle school, with kids acting like cutthroats and trying in every way to be the most popular kid in school. Bo Burnham found something with this movie, something about the American psyche that is changing, how much we rely on others opinions to feel good about ourselves. The lead actress is someone that found a way to confidently show off awkwardness and anxiety with some simple facial expressions and even the way she breathes in a scene. So much emotion was shown in every second. Just completely blew writing out of the water.

christianrmaxwell This movie was absolutely stunning in all departments. Although the acting and writing were definitely the highlights, the cinematography was great as well as the soundtrack. I cannot explain how amazing the music was handled and composed, in fact, shortly after watching the movie I downloaded the entire movie soundtrack onto my phone. The cinematography also lent an extreme amount of realism towards the movie which I highly appreciated. Moving onto the acting, this movie had some of the absolutely best acting that I have seen in a movie all year. Elsie Fisher did an amazing job as Kayla, she stole the show and has honestly given the best performance from any actress I have seen all year. Everyone in the movie did an excellent job in the acting department, nobody in my opinion stood out as a "bad" actor or actress. The writing in this movie was outstanding, Bo Burnham knows how to write an extremely realistic movie filled with hilarious moments, heartfelt moments, and shocking moments. Watching this movie was like watching the main character's life play out, which I thought was amazing, every single line of the movie felt extremely realistic and exactly how a teenager or an adult would behave in modern society. The way I see it, even though this movie is by no means an original concept, it is so well directed, well written, and well acted that it blew me away regardless. This is going to end up being one of my favorite movies of the year I can already tell. I hope to see many more movies from Bo Burnham in the future, the man is a genius.

aaronlbacks As a fan of Bo Burnham since he was posting rap songs on YouTube, I am proud to say he made a pretty solid directorial debut with Eighth Grade. Firstly, as anticipated, this movie is hilarious as hell, and the comedy written in is quite smart as well. And even though the comedy is sharp and witty and IMDb classifies this film as a comedy, I don't think Bo's intentions were to make the audience guffaw. To me, it felt more like a drama with comedic elements thrown in, and I really like that decision. It gave the appearance that he had a message to get across to any struggling eighth grader out there, or even any sort of adult because the theme is quite universal (and kind of trite in the way he portrayed it, but I'll discuss that later), that hope always lays on the horizon, and I'm glad that he was passionate enough about this message that he didn't want to smother it in comedy, even though he could have done so quite easily. While I'm praising the writing, I ought to applaud Bo on the fact that he has a really good eye for watching and scribing how people interact, and teens of this age are so complex to write, especially of this age, it's honestly a miracle he was able to portray them this accurately and consistently for the entire movie. Like I worked at a Boy Scout summer camp for the entirety of this summer and by being around kids this age for like two months, I can say he really hit the nail on the head with how they act - the memes, the social media, the cliques, all of it. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie is seen as a sort of time capsule of this era for future generations, similar to what Dazed and Confused is today. But regardless of all the trends that will inevitably pass, the relatability of blossoming human emotions at this age, and coping with who you want to be in life is explored beautifully and will definitely stand the test of time. I definitely felt for Elsie Fisher, who plays Kayla Day, the eponymous eighth grader of the film, and does an amazing job for such a young actress, as she stood in the bathroom working up the courage to enter a party of strangers who thought she was weird. Or as she called to have her dad pick her up early. Or as she explored crushes, and her boundaries in an incredibly frightening scene towards the end of the movie. (I'd like to address this scene as I felt it was incredibly well done and made me feel super anxious as I'm sure Kayla felt in the moment. But the downside is that its inclusion confused me a little bit? I'm sure it happens in life, but if you take the scene completely out of the movie, it doesn't affect anything, which it definitely would have in real life. This is the one major pit fall in the writing.) Generally just the sense of trying to fit in. And while the film was enjoyable while it explored this theme, it did it in a very lowest common denominator way which was quite disappointing. I found that even though this movie was only an hour and a half long, it started really dragging at some point because there were so many scenes I had seen a million times and the end was so predictable. And compounding on that, the shot composition of the film was quite bland too and that likely contributed as well because the visual department was lacking. Swiss Army Man from 2016 explored many of the same themes of self-discovery in a much more interesting way and it ended up becoming one of my favorites from that year. It's a fine line that needs walked when handling a message that's been used since Shakespeare ("Above all, to thine own self, be true."). And that's a little disappointing coming from Bo Burnham because I know what he's capable of and I feel like he could have done so much more with this movie. But maybe I'm expecting too much out of his debut because it really isn't that bad. I hope he learns a lot from this movie and perfects his craft in the time in between his next movie. Watching him evolve and accomplish so much at such a young age is incredibly inspiring and I can't wait to see what Bo does next!