Blockers: Comedy With a Heart of Gold

When I saw the trailer for Blockers, I was certain I had zero interest in watching this movie. It looked loud, crude, and unremarkable. However, the weekend it premiered, I saw a lot of a articles from critics I respected, all raving about what a great movie it was and exhorting audiences to not be misled by the trailer. Sufficiently intrigued, my friend Katie and I headed off to the theater, where we proceeded to laugh for two hours and walk out with a warm, fuzzy feeling of a Saturday morning well spent.

On the surface, the story doesn't seem to warrant this much admiration. It's about three high school girls and their parents on prom night. The girls have all decided to lose their virginity (hashtag #SexPact2018!) and their parents, who find out accidentally, are determined to hunt down their daughters and prevent them from making a huge mistake. Cue the hi-jinks, with the harried adults (played by the hysterical trio of Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz) trying to crash high school parties, battle with belligerent teens, and get to their precious angels before it's too late.

Meanwhile, the three girls (the incandescent trio of Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Vishwanathan, and Gideon Adlon) merrily barrel through this film as the three most natural teenage girls you have seen on film yet. Each presents a very unique variation on girlhood: there's the pretty and put-together extrovert, the sporty and frank go-getter, and the shy introvert battling with some secrets, but together they are a formidable example of female friendship, steadfast, supportive, and true. They reminded me a great deal of the friends I had growing up (and still have to this day) and there isn't a Mean Girl in the bunch. Which is always a relief in a comedy where you're trying to imagine a good world that isn't populated with garbage people.

And in essence, that is what is so special about Blockers. While it has loud and brash comedy moments (all of which unfortunately featured in the trailer), at its core, it is a story about a bunch of people who all love each other very much and only want what's best for everyone. Every single character (whether a parent or child) has been rendered in loving detail, and it's astonishing how the writers have packed so much character background into this movie without making it explode with exposition. Director Kay Cannon, who wrote the entire Pitch Perfect franchise, clearly knows how to tell wise stories about teenage girls, and what transpires on screen is a wonderful story about fast teenage friendships, transitory but binding adult friendships, and the different relationships mothers and fathers can have with their daughters that ultimately boil down to teaching your kid as best as you can and then trusting them to make the right choices.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my main takeaway from this movie, which is the performance of Geraldine Vishwanathan as Kayla, the teenage girl blessed with John Cena as her father (thereby making her a sporty superstar) and Sarayu Blue as her mother (thereby making her fabulously feminist and half-Indian). I don't get to see a lot of Indian women in Hollywood movies, and this was the first time I was seeing an Indian teenage girl on screen who simply looked Indian with nothing else really mentioned about her background. Instead, she got to be an everyday teenager who talked like everyone else and expressed normal, everyday teenage opinions. I turned to Katie and said, "This is the Indian teenager I've been wanting to see on screen all my life!" and now I finally have her.

So yeah, watch Blockers. It is an incredible film with at least one performance guaranteed to speak to some part of your life experience. And lest I forget, it is ridiculously funny and guaranteed to make you laugh out loud, so really, win-win all around.