Booksmart  ★★★½

YOU won’t see many better comedies this year than Booksmart.

It’s been widely described as a female version of Superbad, the 2007 comedy that starred Jonah Hill and Michael Cera.

That’s under-selling a little because Booksmart is a more rounded film, as you would expect from the strong female voices behind and in front of the camera.

It’s actress Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut and she throws plenty of visual tricks into her presentation in unison with the rapid-fire delivery of the empathetic script.

At times the dialogue is a little over-written and you have to keep focused to take in all the humour.

But there is no doubting the research and understanding of the four 30-something writers for the generation behind them.

Amy and Molly are best friends about to graduate from high school. They are over-achievers who take education and planning their future career paths very seriously.

I guess you’d call them nerds.

Molly in particular looks down on the jocks, bimbos, emos and hippies (I’m sure these aren’t the right terms but you get the ideas) as people who have wasted their time partying and have no futures as a result.

But on the final day at school before graduation she discovers that many of these kids are going on to good colleges or careers, for a variety of reasons.

The girls decide they have one night to make up for all their sacrifices or, as Molly puts it, to experience ‘a seminal, fun anecdote’.

The night turns out to be a series of anecdotes, including drug taking, sex, a car chase and run-in with the police.

In Wilde’s hands everything gets a slight twist, including a clever stop-animation sequence in which the girls are barbie dolls on a drug bender.

The script is a high-wire act that carefull balances the comic and touching moments.

Thankfully, every time you feel a Hollywood moment coming you are jolted back to independent film land.

The entire young cast is terrific, led by Kaitlin Dever as Amy and Beanie Feldsten as Molly.

Initially I was worried the performances would be almost channeling Jonah Hill in Superbad and Saorsie Roman in Ladybird, but they succeed in making the charecters their own.

Among the best of the exceptional support cast are Victoria Ruesga as a gender-fluid object of Amy’s desire; Mason Gooding as a jock who, like all the characters, proves to be more than a ‘type’; Skylar Gisondo and Billie Lourd as weird outcasts; and Molly Gordon as a girl who has also been unfairly labelled.

Jason Sudiekis, Will Forte and Lisa Kudrow also appear in small, fun roles.

Smart, filled with attitude, laugh-out loud funny and tinged with real emotions, Booksmart is a film you will want to watch twice  to take it all in.