"Senior Year" - Film Review
It’s 2002 and the eve of Steph Conway’s (Angourie Rice as teenage Steph, Rebel Wilson as adult Steph) prom when Senior Year begins. Her only friends are Seth (Zaire Adams as teenage Seth, Sam Richardson as adult Seth) and Martha (Molly Brown as teenage Martha, Mary Holland as adult Martha).
Steph moved to Maryland from Australia when she was fifteen and very uncool, but on her sixteenth birthday she decided to find a way to become popular. When senior year rolls around, Steph is at the top of the popularity food chain. She beats out Tiffany (Ana Yi Puig as teenage Tiffany, Zoë Chao as adult Tiffany) for cheer captain, gets a hot boyfriend (Tyler Barnhardt as teenage Blaine, Justin Hartley as adult Blaine), and sets her sights on becoming prom queen. At the pep rally just before prom, Tiffany conspires with the other cheerleaders to make Steph fall during their routine. After she’s launched into the air for a flip, Steph crashes hard onto the gym floor. She falls into a coma and doesn’t wake up for twenty years. Now, at 37, Steph must finish her senior year.
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Rice has perhaps the most difficult job of this group of young actors. Those tuning into Senior Year are probably doing so based on the scene-stealing antics of Wilson in other films. Her turns in Bridesmaids and the Pitch Perfect movies remain her most memorable, and Rice has the burden of opening Senior Year as the young version of Wilson’s character. Happily, she manages to channel the essence of Wilson without making her performance come across as sheer mimicry. In fact, Rice does such a good job that she manages to outshine Wilson. The flashbacks later in the film where Rice returns to take center stage keep the movie afloat. Of course, this isn’t a revelation to anyone who saw Rice effortlessly steal the spotlight from Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in The Nice Guys.
Rice makes a much more compelling lead for the film. All of the young versions of the main characters are exciting up-and-coming talents and could have handily managed the film on their own. Richardson, Chao, and Holland as the adult versions are equally entertaining. It’s a shame they’re playing second fiddle to a much less interesting main character as a teen in an adult’s body.
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Many of Senior Year’s strained attempts at humor come from Steph’s struggles as a fish out of water in 2022. One day she has no idea what an iPhone is, yet the next day she’s making jokes about OnlyFans. It’s hard to believe that in her single-minded quest to become popular, Steph has the time to brush up on the Tiger King phenomenon well enough to reference it. She’s also making extremely dated references to Tamagochis, Mr. T, and VH1 that don’t land. So much of the charm relies on the situational jokes of a teenager stuck in the body of a thirty-seven-year-old, but it doesn’t work the way it does in 17 Again or Freaky Friday.
Over and over again, the audience is reminded that while Steph is physically 37, she’s mentally still a teenager. It makes the relationship between Steph and Seth filled with dubious consent. Other body swap movies haven’t added this layer of a romantic relationship because it’s a minefield to navigate. While Steph does have some character development that forces her to readjust her understanding of popularity, it’s still the emotional growth of a seventeen-year-old.
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It’s not too hard to see where Senior Year went wrong. The humor is rooted in meanness and mockery, despite the script’s insistence that this high school is a place of inclusivity. Even with two impromptu dance numbers, the movie is sluggish and humorless Senior Year clearly has a case of senioritis.
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