Senior Year
Rebel Wilson is the saviour in what otherwise would be a very flat comedic version of Penny Marshall’s Awakenings.
Rebel yell
It’s all been done before, from Vice Versa via Freaky Friday to Big when a person wakes up, seemingly, in somebody else's body. In Senior Year there's a slight difference in that it’s two decades later when Stephanie Conway, once the athletic captain of the cheerleading team of Harding High School, comes out of a coma believing that nothing has happened. However, following an aerial stunt that went wrong at age 17, in which she fell from a dizzy height and hit the deck, she has lost the subsequent twenty years. Coming round and wide awake, she has to get used to her new life.
It’s the sort of premise that has great possibilities because Steph gradually learns that life around her has altered. Political correctness has come on the scene, so she has to accept new attitudes, such as there are now no winners or losers, just participants in the game of life. She has to take cellphones, social media and flat-screen TVs on board and the fact that Lady Gaga has superseded Madonna and that there have been umpteen Fast and Furious sequels. Moreover, Blaine, her former would-be love interest, is now a boringly married car salesman. However, she still wants to graduate and still hankers after being crowned Prom Queen. Somehow she is convinced she must now change to get what she finally wants. Of course it is not as simple as that because if there is a message, and it's a pretty simplistic one, it’s that you should not change but just be yourself. End of message.
Senior Year needed a strong comic lead to make it work and with Rebel Wilson as Steph she is just what the script doctor ordered. Wilson can make the tamest of comic lines sound funnier even if they aren't too clever. She has such a wildly strong personality to carry the lamest of screenplays, which here, by the way, is the work of three whole writers. However, the other cast members do their best: Angourie Rice is delightful as the young Steph, Zoe Chao wickedly cruel as Tiffany, the bane of Steph's life, and now wife of Steph's ex-love interest Blaine (Justin Hartley), while Mary Holland as Martha, her previous best friend, is now the shrewish principal cheerleading coach. Together they do their utmost with not the best of screenplays and some often too-obvious gags. However, luckily Rebel Wilson holds it all together as well as she can, but without her it would not amount to very much at all.
MICHAEL DARVELL
Cast: Rebel Wilson, Sam Richardson, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Justin Hartley, Chris Parnell, Angourie Rice, Michael Cimino, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Brandon Scott Jones, Alicia Silverstone, Jade Bender, Joshua Colley, Avantika, Molly Brown, Zaire Adams, Ana Yi Puig, Tyler Barnhardt.
Dir Alex Hardcastle, Pro Rebel Wilson, Todd Garner, Timothy M. Bourne and Chris Bender, Screenplay Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli and Brandon Scott Jones, Ph Marco Fargnoli, Pro Des David Sandefur, Ed Sarah Lucky, Music Jermaine Stegall, Costumes Salvador Perez Jr, Choreography Aakomon Jones.
Broken Road Productions/CBS Films/Paramount Pictures/Paramount Players-Netflix.
111 mins. USA. 2022. US & UK Rel: 13 May 2022. Cert. 15.