Teenage Girl: Skip Day (2022)

"This is the story of four girls from different social cliques who meet each other during Senior Skip Day, they discover they are more like each other than they thought." Teenage Girl: Skip Day seems to be part of a "Teenage Girl" franchise with various stories about monumental moments in a teen girl's life. It follows in the tradition of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, The Breakfast Club, Can't Hardly Wait, and Superbad. The overall story is certainly directed toward the teen demographic and it never strays from that vibe which was pleasant as all too often when a coming of age film is made one has to wonder who the target audience is or why they didn't just opt to make the characters college students, not so with this film. The moments of comedic relief are prevalent with the character Italy, played by Abigail Guerrero, who let's loose a mean left hook that hilariously caught me off guard. While the film may have some flaws in it's audio editing, overall it's an ambitious undertaking with a fairly decent payoff. The soundtrack is actually quite nice, setting the overall mood of the story. Teenage Girl: Skip Day gives you the impression that the writer grew up with those iconic 1980's coming of age films & wants to bring that feeling back with this series that feels both nostalgic and an attempt to revive the genre. Teenage Girl: Skip Day starts to get stronger toward the end of the film, so it does leave you on a higher note than when it began. The ensemble cast had me rooting for each and every single one of them and by the end, I wanted these girls to be happy, even Italy. So if you are a parent looking for a coming of age film that you can watch with your kids and not have to worry about the content therein this movie is kind of perfect for that. As with all coming of age films you can sit there and rag on it, make fun of it, have fun, and maybe, if you're lucky, you might walk away from the experience finding something relatable in it.