Watching this movie is like being transported back to middle school, and I do not mean that in a good way. It skips the really serious mean girls stuff all the while capturing the incredible awkwardness of the age. Kayla is a very shy girl who is almost invisible in her school. The movie opens with her doing advise videos, and while the advise is largely very reasonable, we come to see that it does not come from Kayla's experience. She has one sharply challenging moment where the mother of the most popular girl at school gets her daughter to invite Kayla to her birthday party (we strongly suspect the mom is thinking about getting on Kayla's father's good side), and she goes, but survives around the periphery. We all know this is better than many other alternatives, but it is still hard to watch.
So the movie covers all of what everyone goes through at this age, but superimposed on it are the twenty first century realities, walking the viewer through what it's like to be a teenager today: constant internet use,
scrolling through the carefully curated Instagram feeds of classmates,
the societal pressure to seem "okay" and "fabulous" all the time. When a
teenager feels pressure to "perform" her life on Instagram or Snapchat,
it changes the game in subtle ways that probably aren't even understood
yet. Beautifully acted and scripted.
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