Directed by Alex Hardcastle from a screenplay by Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli, and Brandon Scott Jones, Senior Year tells a familiar story. While it attempts to incorporate elements of classic films from the late 1990s and early aughts, the Netflix comedy fails to capture any magic with a lackluster script that could have used a lot more heart. The film is filled with nostalgia, but doesn’t use it to properly amplify its own story. The lead character, relationship dynamics and premise are surface-level and, despite a few funny moments, Senior Year never lives up to its potential.
Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) is not cool or popular. To prevent herself from ever being made fun of or belittled again in front of her peers by mean girl Tiffany (Ana Yi Puig and played by Zoë Chao as an adult), Stephanie vows to become popular. By her senior year, Stephanie is not only cheerleading captain, but she’s dating Blaine (Tyler Barnhardt and played by Justin Hartley as an adult), the most popular boy at Harding High, and is on track to win prom queen. Unfortunately, her dreams are never realized after a cheerleading accident lands her in a 20-year coma. Waking up at 37, Stephanie (now played by Rebel Wilson) is shocked to realize she’s been unconscious for so long. Not wasting any time, Stephanie reconnects with her old friends Martha (Mary Holland), now high school principal, and Seth (Sam Richardson), and decides to go back to high school in a bid to win prom queen. The only issue is the rules have changed since 2002 and Stephanie has to keep up if she wants victory.
Senior Year plays like a cheap knockoff of Never Been Kissed. It's so focused on being cute and quirky, but it's so disingenuous that it never grows a personality of its own. Perhaps the film's biggest blunder is its lack of heart. Nothing Stephanie does feels like it's heartfelt, even when she realizes she's been focused on the wrong thing for far too long. Caught up in the need to be popular and being crowned prom queen, Stephanie very rarely has a moment to internalize and think on what she is doing. It's because the film can never bring its protagonist out of the superficial goals she strives for that the story remains as one-dimensional as she is.
Comedies can be silly and sometimes even nonsensical, but Senior Year feels like a complete waste of time. Yes, there are hints of the potential of what this film could be. An example is when Stephanie recalls a touching memory between her and her late mother. Unfortunately, the brief moments don't last very long, overshadowed entirely by the premise that never properly builds any real tension or stakes. Stephanie skates along and there's a sense the film is more caught up with appealing to millennial nostalgia than it is catering to its own story and character dynamics. A sequence featuring Wilson and her costars reenacting Britney Spears' music video for "(You Drive Me) Crazy" is fun, but wholly unnecessary and distracting.
The excessive nostalgia for the 1990s and early aughts is a substitute for a layered story that could have been so much more than it is. The film takes inspiration from the aforementioned Drew Barrymore-led film and others, like 13 Going on 30, but these movies know exactly what they are — Senior Year does not. It doesn't help that much of the humor is not all that funny. Dialogue and scenes that are comedic are few and far between. The majority of the film is a chore to sit through, bland and trying to be something it's not. There's a familiarity baked into the film, but it's more of a been there, done that vibe than anything else, which isn’t helped by its nearly two-hour runtime.
Viewers old enough to remember the early aughts will have much better things to do than to relive an era that has already been done better in other films (like Disney Pixar’s Turning Red). Meanwhile, younger viewers may not find there is much else in the comedy to like or laugh along with. And while Senior Year has certain moments that are indeed funny, it’s not enough to overcome the film’s many flaws.
Senior Year is streaming on Netflix as of May 13. The film is 111 minutes long and is rated R for sexual material, language, and brief teen drinking/drug use.
