Senior Year

Rebel Wilson stars in a back-to-school comedy that gets its laughs and drama — strained as they sometimes are — from the ways high school experiences have ...

By the final act, its dialogue is so burdened by inspirational maxims about personal authenticity that it feels as though the script has been hijacked by yearbook quotes. The big joke is the radical vibe shift in youth culture from hierarchy to equality. Stephanie’s final pre-coma memory is of a basket toss that carried her 10 feet into the air, a height from which she could see her whole future: She would be prom queen, marry a hunky jock and spend the rest of her life in suburban bliss.

The comedy actress and producer discusses her growth in Hollywood over the past decade and the benefits of premiering her film on video streaming over a ...

She was so wonderful from the second I met her, she recognized the fact that I was the youngest on-set and that it was a little bit difficult and a little bit intimidating. With Senior Year skipping a theatrical release and going the increasingly trending route of premiering on video streaming, Rebel says of her comedy’s Netflix release, “To me, to release a comedy, it’s like the best platform because this movie will go wide in 200 countries on the same day and will be seen by millions and millions. “I remember like when I got in Bridesmaids, my goal was to just to come to Hollywood and get in one American movie. She made sure that it felt like summer camp when we were in Atlanta. We would go to movies and baseball games and dinners and she corralled us all and was such a great leader.” “My opinion of social media is I think I thank my parents for this, but I got onto social media very late, at least comparatively to a lot of my friends. I was like God, if I could just get in one, then people in Australia will think I’m legit as an actress and then Bridesmaids was such a huge hit. I think honestly, if you’re just like posting things that you love and make you happy and you want to share with the world, that’s all you really can do. “Most people don’t know I have a law degree and so, I kind of use some of the business side of things in the producing and it’s a different set of skills to acting. I couldn’t imagine - I mean, someone getting bullied at school is worse enough but then if you’re getting bullied through your phone as well, things like that, it can be really awful and just a whole other set of issues.” Being a part of the younger generation on social media himself, Joshua tells me, “I definitely have experienced times where I’m like Oh no, I didn’t get enough ‘Likes’ on this picture or my engagement is going down or something like that - it’s so stupid. I just rock up on-set and say funny stuff, but the producing - there’s a lot of work behind the scenes and a movie like this takes years to come together and put together and to bring in the whole team of talented people. There are so many differences between 2022 and 2002 culturally and in society and as a comic premise, that is going to be pretty good.”

Spare parts of high school comedies from “Peggy Sue Got Married” to “Mean Girls” and beyond have been torn asunder, then sewn back together to create ...

The real laughs are almost all incidental ones sporting a feel of improvisation, with Holland, Richardson, Hartley and Chris Parnell (as the heroine’s widowed father) particularly adept at such business. Nor does veteran TV director Hardcastle lend proceedings the kind of high style that might accentuate the script’s more absurdist notes, despite decently colorful design contributions. The cheer squad still exists, but under Martha’s coaching, it’s quite a different entity, doing little routines about global warming and inclusiveness. Alas, an acrobatic not-quite-accident orchestrated by the aforementioned rival at a pep rally ends all this social perfection with a splat. After absorbing the shock of being a mental teenager in a 37-year-old body, Steph decides she’ll finish everything — including the 12th grade — she’d started in a different epoch, on the exact same terms. Nonetheless, if Alex Hardcastle’s effortfully high-spirited Netflix feature isn’t exactly good, it’s still good enough to provide reasonable throwaway fun, thanks much less to the material than to a cast that elevates it when they can.

Rebel Wilson recycles her usual shtick in this retrograde raunch-com about a woman reclaiming her high school life.

While the kooky shenanigans and hijinks don’t yield much in the way of heart or humor, its snappy pace and the leading lady’s comedic prowess make it just worthy enough for your Netflix queue. Her teenage aspirations of one day owning the most picturesque house in town are quickly dashed when she discovers adult Tiffany (Zoe Chao) and Blaine (Justin Hartley) are married and living there. Her scenes with writer-actor Jones, who also co-starred with her in the aforementioned film, show off their pleasant rapport, yet sadly can’t save the picture. Her nuance also elevates the material, specifically in the third act, when the script calls on her to sell her character’s inevitable change from selfish to selfless. It doesn’t take long for Senior Year to lay out its outlandish premise, which is centered on a popular high schooler who awakens from a two-decade-long coma and, hoping to pick up right where she left off, strives to finish her senior year at the age of 37. Tragedy strikes when jealous class bully Tiffany (Ana Yi Puig) sabotages their show-stopping, Bring It On-esque cheer routine, landing the 17-year-old in a hospital bed, stuck in a coma.

Senior Year on Netflix stars Rebel Wilson in the coming of age comedy - but is the film worth watching? Read our Senior Year review to find out.

The plot itself is neither here nor there, simply a new contrivance to tell a fish-out-of-water story. Nor is it punchy enough for the meanness to feel anything other than a poor facsimile of truth. Throughout two hours of cliché 21st-century high school "humour", Senior Year fails to take off.

The streamer's latest original comedy, starring Rebel Wilson and Justin Hartley, has some awkward moments and hard-to-watch scenes.

Prom and graduation both include lengthy choreographed dances that definitely could've been trimmed or cut to keep the movie from being nearly two hours long. But Janet eventually tells her that if she wants anything to happen at the school, she'll have to win over Bri, Tiffany's daughter. Blaine is with Tiffany by the time Stephanie wakes up from her coma, and the couple is married with a daughter. Now that she's graduated, Stephanie is interested in going to college and tells the guidance counselor that she'll do anything to get in while making sexual gestures. When Blaine makes a final, desperate attempt to win Stephanie back at the prom, he mentions that he has "a naughty thing for prom queens." Stephanie calls Tiffany the "buttroids" on her butt and Tiffany replies by calling her a "koala-ass." Everything Stephanie does and says in the movie theater is uncomfortable to witness. Even after Martha calls out how inappropriate the interactions between Stephanie and the students are, Stephanie continues to act exactly the same. During their cheer routine at the school pep rally, right when Stephanie goes up in a big basket-toss stunt, Tiffany apparently convinces their teammates to let her fall to the ground. On the way to school, Stephanie slams on the breaks, causing Seth to hit his head on the dashboard. In their next scene, Stephanie is sitting on Blaine's lap as they make out and loudly discuss their plans to have sex at prom — all of which is happening in the middle of class. She makes fun of Stephanie and her "freak show" friends for hanging out at the Rock 'N' Bowl. But Tiffany is also there, and it's already been described as a "cool" hangout spot.

Rebel Wilson (Stephanie Conway) · Angourie Rice (Young Stephanie Conway) · Justin Hartley (Blaine) · Zoë Chao (Tiffany) · Mary Holland (Martha) · Sam Richardson ( ...

In the past couple of years, Avantika has landed roles on shows like Mira, Royal Detective and Diary of a Future President, as well as the Disney Channel original movieSpin. But, since there’s a chance we could ruin some of those surprises for anyone who has yet to watch the new film as part of the 2022 Netflix movie schedule, we’ll play it safe for now. If the stars properly align, he will talk about For Love Of The Game being the best baseball movie of all time. This includes shows like Walk the Prank, Dog Days, and the Training Day film-to-TV adaptation that featured the late Bill Paxton. Over the years, Cimino has also worked on film projects like Shangri-La Suite, Annabelle Comes Home, and Centurion XII. Over the years, Richardson has given memorable performances on shows like Veep, Detroiters, Champaign ILL, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, Ted Lasso, and most recently The Afterparty, to just name a few of his many small-screen roles. Going back to 2016, Hartley has portrayed Kevin Pearson on This Is Us, racking up a pair of Screen Actors Guild Awards alongside his incredible costars in the process. Well, no need to grab your old yearbook in an attempt to jog your memory as we have put together a rundown of the Senior Year cast, including all of their major movie and TV roles, that hopefully helps you remember where you’ve seen them before. His film work includes Hot Rod, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, 21 Jump Street, Sisters, and several dozen others. Her film credits include Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, Golden Arm, and Between Two Ferns: The Movie. Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past decade or so, you’ll instantly recognize Wilson from her star-making performances in the Pitch Perfect franchise. Over the years, Bender has appeared in one-off roles on a number TV shows including Warren the Ape and The Player, as well as a brief recurring spot on Major Crimes. During that same stretch of time, Bender has popped up in movies like Bad Night, A Cowgirl’s Story, and the made for TV movie, Night School. Next up is Zoë Chao who appears in the Senior Year cast as Tiffany, Stephanie’s bitter high school rival who went on to become prom queen and marry her high school boyfriend while Stephanie was in a coma following the traumatic accident two decades earlier.

“Senior Year” takes two high-concept premises—the going-back-to-high-school movie and the waking-up-from-a-coma movie—and slams them together in an ...

Is “Senior Year” mocking this cultural shift as a bad thing, as performative “wokeness,” to borrow a reductive phrase? This is the era in which everyone gets a trophy, and people love you if you post on social media about how passionate you are about environment. And if “Senior Year” is trying to say anything at all about how different things are for young people now, it’s not doing so with much force or clarity. (Holland in particular has terrific comic timing.) Justin Hartley shows up as the hunky, grown-up version of her high school boyfriend, who’s now married to mean-girl Tiffany (Zoë Chao). It’s a strong supporting cast, which makes it frustrating that they don’t get much to play beyond a couple of character traits. That’s been the perky, blonde Stephanie’s obsessive quest since she moved to the United States from Australia as an awkward 14-year-old. It’s a decent vehicle for the bawdy charms of Rebel Wilson, who continues to establish herself as an appealing comic lead beyond being a reliably irreverent sidekick.

The best scene in Senior Year on Netflix is Rebel Wilson performing Britney Spears' song 'Crazy.' Watch the full Senior Year dance scene here.

In a behind-the-scenes video released by Netflix, which you can watch above along with the full “Crazy” dance scene, Wilson said they rehearsed the number over the course of five days. “In a couple takes, our director Alex Hardcastle was like, ‘I thought for a second that was Britney.'” Equally impressive are the teen actors, some of whom, it turns out, are pretty amazing dancers. So it’s only fitting that Wilson’s character, Stephanie, would turn to Britney in a time of need. Much of Senior Year—the new Netflix comedy starring Rebel Wilson that began streaming today—is spent on nostalgia. But curiously, a lot of that nostalgia is for the year 1999, rather than 2002.