Senior Year has a fun first half that fails to build on in the pedestrian and routine second half. It’s got a fun idea for a fish-out-of-water, blast-from-the-past storyline that ultimately is just used for Rebel Wilson’s usual brand of cringe humor. Good cast though… quite winning and charming bunch.

The film is about an Australian transplant who decides she needs to be the most popular girl in high school in 1998. But her cheer captain routine goes wrong and she winds up in a twenty year coma, waking up as Rebel Wilson but with her old high school mind. She decides to finish off her senior year in a modern high school with a 90s mind.

Rebel Wilson will likely make or break the movie for most people. She doesn’t do a lot different from her usual routine but, at least for a while, her cringe comedy shtick was working. It was a little surprising to see how much her weight loss has changed her body and her face and she looks good. But it was distracting seeing her usual routine transferred to her slimmer self. This did at least mean we didn’t get a bunch of fat jokes.

There’s a little out-of-time comedy that worked… she points out that Madonna is now called Lady Gaga and that made me laugh… but not enough of it. I guess it’s a balancing act how hard to play the 90s references… but there were a lot of missed opportunities.

But the comedy is just as much mocking the modern take on high school. It’s a little amusing but starts to feel pretty aggressive too…. like this is the screenwriter and director angrily taking down “woke” culture. I haven’t been in high school in decades but this felt like the cliché version of school Hollywood has been crafting over the past decade.

The flick could have gone worse, could have gone a lot better. I enjoyed the cast and really wish the girl playing Rebel Wilson’s character in the 90s had stuck around longer. It’s got a few chuckles but ultimately just runs out of steam with a lot of generic high school comedy clichés. Too bad… they were onto something here.

Score: 69