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Eighth Grade: The Screenplay
Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.
92 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 17, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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March 3, 2023bo burnham is, at his core - and i cannot stress this enough - a STORYTELLER.
August 26, 2024
Such a deeply relatable character. Reminds me of my teenage years. I do not know how Bo - a fully grown man - somehow has insight on exactly what girlhood is like but I think that is a testament to his amazing writing skills
October 19, 2025
Eighth Grade, written and directed by Bo Burnham
8 out of 10
Kayla is an unlikely heroine, but the talent of Elsie Fischer, the young actress in the leading role, and the brilliance of the script make her story memorable.
The protagonist is charming, uneasy, kind, frustrated, creative, moody, an awkward melange of feelings, emotions, disappointments and achievements.
She has a habit of uploading YouTube videos which are meant to be educational.
And they are!
She is obviously not an experienced, professional performer- producer, but her innocence, even her ignorance, make her endearing and a pleasure to watch
Kayla has a good relationship with Mark Day aka the talented Josh Hamilton, her father.
There are outre moments, but these occur in any family with teenagers.
Furthermore he is a single parent.
When asked in school, the heroine pretends that not only she has experimented with blow jobs, but she is very good at them.
Only she has to google for information on this matter.
When she takes a banana to see what it should be like, her father comes into the kitchen...
I thought you did not like bananas
Oh, but I do
When I asked you a few eels ago, you scolded me for not remembering you hate them
Well, that changed...
Still, she spits it out when she tries to eat it.
With a group of older boys and girls, she is sitting at a table, in the mall, at KFC, as the cups indicate.
They mention that fact that she is different, an age gap could mean they are from different worlds, as one boy puts it.
Others disagree and she is protected by a kind girl.
The older boy also insists that he only meant she is different, not that there is anything bad, with that...
No disrespect.
Suddenly, one of them says that they must not look all at the same time, but there is a creep who had been watching them for a long time.
When they look, the protagonist spots her father.
She confronts him and they have a few clashes before and after this.
However, she does empathize with him.
She has such a tremendous emotional intelligence that she tells him:
If I would be my mother, I would hate my life...
This proves that she can see that she is often hard to cope with.
Mark is an exceptional father - except perhaps he comes over at the door with a bare chest too often, actually all the time.
He insists he loves his daughter so much.
As her father, he could not be prouder.
In fact, he has no words to express what he feels.
Thomas Mann would disagree, for he has a short story where the main character is aghast at the frequency with which people say:
I have no words to express my love...describe my friendship...
Words like love and friendship exist only in books, that character purports...
Eighth Grade is a beautiful, great film and Elsie Fisher will be a wonderful actress...well, she is already, but we should see her future films to admire her progress.
8 out of 10
Kayla is an unlikely heroine, but the talent of Elsie Fischer, the young actress in the leading role, and the brilliance of the script make her story memorable.
The protagonist is charming, uneasy, kind, frustrated, creative, moody, an awkward melange of feelings, emotions, disappointments and achievements.
She has a habit of uploading YouTube videos which are meant to be educational.
And they are!
She is obviously not an experienced, professional performer- producer, but her innocence, even her ignorance, make her endearing and a pleasure to watch
Kayla has a good relationship with Mark Day aka the talented Josh Hamilton, her father.
There are outre moments, but these occur in any family with teenagers.
Furthermore he is a single parent.
When asked in school, the heroine pretends that not only she has experimented with blow jobs, but she is very good at them.
Only she has to google for information on this matter.
When she takes a banana to see what it should be like, her father comes into the kitchen...
I thought you did not like bananas
Oh, but I do
When I asked you a few eels ago, you scolded me for not remembering you hate them
Well, that changed...
Still, she spits it out when she tries to eat it.
With a group of older boys and girls, she is sitting at a table, in the mall, at KFC, as the cups indicate.
They mention that fact that she is different, an age gap could mean they are from different worlds, as one boy puts it.
Others disagree and she is protected by a kind girl.
The older boy also insists that he only meant she is different, not that there is anything bad, with that...
No disrespect.
Suddenly, one of them says that they must not look all at the same time, but there is a creep who had been watching them for a long time.
When they look, the protagonist spots her father.
She confronts him and they have a few clashes before and after this.
However, she does empathize with him.
She has such a tremendous emotional intelligence that she tells him:
If I would be my mother, I would hate my life...
This proves that she can see that she is often hard to cope with.
Mark is an exceptional father - except perhaps he comes over at the door with a bare chest too often, actually all the time.
He insists he loves his daughter so much.
As her father, he could not be prouder.
In fact, he has no words to express what he feels.
Thomas Mann would disagree, for he has a short story where the main character is aghast at the frequency with which people say:
I have no words to express my love...describe my friendship...
Words like love and friendship exist only in books, that character purports...
Eighth Grade is a beautiful, great film and Elsie Fisher will be a wonderful actress...well, she is already, but we should see her future films to admire her progress.
July 2, 2025
A perfect screenplay for a perfect film.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews