Actress Olivia Wilde displays some serious directing chops with her delightful debut feature, and breathes new life into the tired teen comedy. It’s about a pair of besties (Kaitlyn Dever & Beanie Feldstein) who realize on the eve of their high school graduation that they were so intent on getting good grades that they didn’t have a lot of fun, and set about cramming four years of missed madness into one night. 

There are soooo many ways this could have gone wrong (and I think I’ve sat through most of them). But Wilde approaches the teenage condition with a deft touch that’s rarely amiss. She’s helped by a smart script bristling with rapid-fire dialogue, sizzling cinematography, intuitive editing and a danceable soundtrack. Almost every joke works (loved the psychotropic Barbie sequence). It’s simply a lot of fun. American Pie with a brain. A-plus.

(102 min)