Knock the ‘90s unconscious and get the nightmare ‘Senior Year’
Netflix
Imagine “Big” if you couldn’t stand the main character or “Billy Madison” if you never laughed or “Never Been Kissed” if you felt sad every moment or “21 Jump Street” without a resonant friendship or “Mean Girls” without any memorable characters and you get “Senior Year,” a sort of body swap comedy where Stephanie (Rebel Wilson), essentially, swaps bodies with herself. Following a 20-year coma sparked from a cheerleading accident that wasn’t an accident and absolutely should’ve led to charges, Stephanie wakes in 2022 at 37, still obsessed with status and winning prom queen as if it were still the late ‘90s/early 2000s. The result is a throwback that seems to think TBT means totally, bafflingly terrible, forcing us to watch as a horrible, selfish person returns to high school and very, very, very slowly learns that there is more to life than popularity–something the character might have learned from about 1,000 other movies even while missing two decades of pop culture.
It’s all just so painfully basic, as of course all of the most important people in Stephanie’s life (her former crush, now played by Justin Hartley; her former enemy, now married to her crush and played by Zoe Chao; and her former close friend who was in love with her and is now played by the always-appealing Sam Richardson) still live and work within a two-mile radius. The movie mostly discards the bizarre medical diagnosis of Stephanie still being 17 years-old emotionally, so hardly any scenes unfold as if the characters are really acknowledging the discomfort of the premise.
This is a weird, sad concept that demands glossing over it so as not to seem horrifying or depressing, which is really a great idea for a comedy! Until the mandatory third-act redemption, Stephanie–whose awfulness leads to a thin and unlikable star turn from Wilson–will make you ask questions like, “Why are her friends so undeservingly loyal?” and “What’s the least I’ve ever rooted for a movie character?” (Fortunately, “Senior Year” is very sure that the new generation is much more enlightened and admirable, though the running gag about cheers about social issues was already a Jessie Spano plot point about 30 years ago).
Meanwhile, if you thought the time period was a cheap lunge toward millennial buy-in in “Turning Red,” get ready; the empty nostalgia of “Senior Year” makes the cultural references in “Hot Tub Time Machine” feel like a seminar in subtlety. That means nods to Joey Fatone, Blockbuster, the Calling, “Waterfalls” and MTV’s VMAs (twice) within just the first 15 minutes, plus one of the era’s worst songs (Tal Bachman’s “She’s So High”). It’s clear that director Alex Hardcastle and the three-person writing team believe any mention of anything from the ‘90s (and tampon jokes and just anything lazy and crass) will result in wild applause, which means Stephanie tells her old friend (Mary Holland) she now looks like an “Ally McBeal” character and lots and lots of Britney Spears, on walls and in a full-on recreation of the “(You Drive Me) Crazy” music video. Coma or not, her sense of humor on a 37-year-old woman ranks roughly around the awkward, embarrassing antics of “Dumb and Dumber To.”
So why is the grade below not an F? Simply because “Senior Year” does make the hardly novel but very relevant point about social media representing the modern version of high school popularity, providing a shallow version of happiness and success while having little to do with the reality of the person’s unfiltered life.
Otherwise, to quote teenage Stephanie: Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
D
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