Eighth Grade

If you are after a comedy that actually makes you laugh out loud, Eighth Grade is available on Amazon Prime Video and Crave right now. The runtime earns every minute, with nothing here that feels like padding. 1,675 people have weighed in on TMDB, and the verdict leans heavily positive. Elsie Fisher is the obvious draw, but the whole ensemble earns its laughs. There is no real reason to keep putting it off — it is right there on Amazon Prime Video.

Eighth Grade arrived without much fanfare and built its audience the hard way — through word of mouth. The jokes in Eighth Grade land because the characters underneath them are worth caring about. 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. Elsie Fisher and Josh Hamilton lead a cast that brings real weight to the material. It was released in 2018. The real test of any comedy is whether it is still funny once you know all the jokes, and Eighth Grade holds up on rewatch in a way that separates it from one-off curiosities. It knows exactly what it is, and does not try to be anything else.

Eighth Grade is the kind of thing you put on in the background and end up fully watching. If you have run out of similar titles to watch, this is a strong next pick. A contained runtime means every scene is doing real work. Elsie Fisher is funny in a way that holds up on rewatch. Put it on when you need something guaranteed to land.