Recently, a new movie, Senior Year, came out on Netflix. It’s all about Stephanie (or Steph) who wakes up from a 20-year coma. When she wakes up, she decides to go back to finish high school and become prom queen. Along the way, she discovers how the world’s changed and who her real friends are. After seeing it come up in my recommendations, I finally decided to give it a watch.
The Story
Senior Year shows Stephanie as a 37-year-old adult who still feels like a 17-year-old teenager. So, her character hasn’t changed all that much because it doesn’t feel like any time’s passed for her. She’s still so focused on wanting to be popular and for everyone to love her. Her old friends, however, have grown up and know that being popular isn’t everything. In fact, they never cared about being popular. They just genuinely cared about Stephanie throughout all those years of her being in a coma. However, Stephanie doesn’t realize that until near the end of the movie.
The other big part of the movie involves Stephanie trying to win prom queen. Stephanie got injured from a cheerleading stunt gone wrong (thanks to her high school nemesis, Tiffany), so she never went to prom. Now, her old friend, Martha, completely changed how the school works. Because she’s also the high school’s principal now. She’s basically devised the school to try to make everyone feel equal as opposed to there being popular kids and outsiders. However, Tiffany still abides by the whole popular kids mentality as she married Blaine, the popular boy in school as well as Stephanie’s ex-boyfriend. Although, he was technically her boyfriend before he got together with (AKA cheated on her with) Steph.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Senior Year is a nice feel-good comedy movie. I’ve always been a fan of Rebel Wilson and her movies and this was no exception. I love that despite Tiffany and Blaine’s somewhat refusal to grow past their high school selves, their daughter, Bri, rises above it. Tiffany tries to sabotage Steph when she tries to win prom queen and throws an after-party. But Bri withdraws her name from the running to let her win and even tells everyone to go to Steph’s party.
And despite the shallow desire to become prom queen, they do give her a pretty valid reason why. And it’s more than just because she’s a teenager who’s desperate to fit in. Instead, there’s a much more sincere reason behind it. The best part of this movie is the fact that it shows the traditional idea of popular kids in school as outdated. As much as Steph pushes against Martha’s new teenage environment she’s created, Steph finally realizes that Martha was right to do so in the end.
Senior Year is now available to watch on Netflix.