The Summer’s Best Cringe Fest, ‘Eighth Grade’ Is Fantastic

It might be unexpected to find a film titled Eighth Grade, about the challenges of pre-adolescence, to come with an R rating. If so, congratulations, you’re old enough to have officially forgotten just how it was — just how we were — at the turn of our teens. And, in the that way, Eighth Grade is for you. The eighth grade — the movie and real life alike — is cringingly awkward. A coming-of-age film in the vein of Lady Bird, Eighth Grade adds an unflinching, uncomfortable look at our earliest sex education, from focused scenes on sexual coercion and fumbling advances, to passing observations of boys masturbating in the classroom. All of it is seen through the lens of Kayla, a young girl with social anxiety, as she wraps up her last week of middle school and tries to portray a confidence on social media that she severely lacks in real life. The film is written and directed by a now 27-year old Bo Burnham, one of the earliest YouTube stars who went viral at age 16 for his music parodies, who then went on to become a comedian, write a lot of bad, cringe-worthy comedy, develop anxiety on his own, and eventually (and, to many of us, surprisingly) become a skilled and empathetic enough writer to create something as touching as Eighth Grade. It capitalizes on his own history as a teen raised through social media and its effects, only this film spins it away from his personal experience by having a young girl, Kayla, played wonderfully by Elsie Fisher, who is the complete opposite…