Movie review: 'Senior Year' is slightly better than watching paint dry

The Netflix comedy misses more than it hits from trying to be an update on films from the late 1990s and early aughts (the decade from 2000 to 2009). Sadly, that past belongs to a future which has long since passed in terms how this movie tries to reenact it.

Storyline

Highschool girl Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) is trying her best to be popular. However, a bitchy Tiffany (Ana Yi Puig and played by Zoë Chao as an adult) is there like a human stop sign directing her self-love caravan back to the minor leagues where the unpopular kids are found.

Not to be sidetracked, Stephanie is determined to become popular. By her senior year, she is cheerleading captain, dating Blaine (Tyler Barnhardt and played by Justin Hartley as an adult), the most popular boy at Harding High, and is on track to being crowned prom queen.

Sadly, Tiffany won’t let that happen as she engineers a cheerleading ‘accident’ which lands Stephanie in a 20-year coma. Waking up at 37 years of age, Stephanie (now played by Rebel Wilson) finds herself in unfamiliar territory.

Rebel Wilson Pulse

She then reconnects with her old friends Martha (Mary Holland), now high school principal at Harding High and Seth (Sam Richardson).

With Martha’s help, she goes back to high school in a bid to be prom queen. The only problem is that 2022 is not 2002 and being popular is a whole different ball of wax.

Is it any good?

This movie would have been more fun with sharper dialogue, better humour and depth when it comes to character formation. Instead, we have a “Who Killed Captain Alex” level movie disguised as Drew Barrymore’s “Never Kissed”. Meaning its misplaced humour is found in the personality crisis it finds itself in by trying to be what it is not.