MOVIE - Eighth Grade

R (1:34)

Wide release 8/3/18

Viewed 8/6/18
IMBd: 7.5

RT Critic:  99  Audience:  83
Critic's Consensus:  Eighth Grade takes a look at its titular time period that offers a rare and resounding ring of truth while heralding breakthroughs for writer-director Bo Burnham and captivating star Elsie Fisher.

Cag:  2/Bleh...it was okay, I guess

Directed by Bo Burnham, who also wrote it

Studio A24

My comments:  This movie was painful.  Difficult to believe.  Even weird kids have friends (most of the time), and Kayla isn't weird.  She's average.  Nothing-special looks, almost cute other than she doesn't stand up straight.  Probably an average student.  Thoughtful.  She seems to lack self-confidence, but that again is "average."  But she would have friends, of this I am certain. (I was a teacher in three different K-8 schools, for some of the years actually teaching 8th grade). This movie depicts her a being totally friendless.  No way.  Probably one of the biggest themes in the movie is the social networking that's happening in kids' lives now.

RT/ IMDb Summary  Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school--the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year before she begins high school.