Hit New Netflix Movie Shoots Straight to No. 1 Spot

The new Netflix movie Senior Year provided the streamer with a much-needed hit as the streamer deals with increasingly bad news. The comedy stars Rebel Wilson as a woman in her late 30s who wakes up from a 20-year coma and goes back to high school to finish her diploma. Senior Year earned mixed reviews from critics, but the R-rated comedy has done well with Netflix subscribers.

Senior Year was released on Friday and holds the top spot on the top 10 Movies in the U.S. Today chart. Other Netflix originals on the chart include Our Father, Operation Mincemeat, The Perfect Family, and Marmaduke. The top show on the Top 10 TV Shows in the U.S. chart, The Lincoln Lawyer, was also released on Friday.

Wilson stars as Stephanie Conway, who was injured in a cheerleading accident in 2002. After spending 20 years in a coma, she wakes up in 2022 and decides to go back to high school to finish her degree. Tiffany, the girl who caused the accident 20 years ago, is now married to Blaine, whom Stephanie wanted to date when she was a teenager. Sam Richardson, Zoe Chao, Mary Holland, and Justin Hartley also star in the movie. Alicia Silverstone, who starred in the’90s high school comedy Clueless, also has a role. DJ Steve Aoki makes a cameo as himself.

Alex Hardcastle, who directed episodes of New Girl, Grace & Frankie, Parks and Recreation, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, directed Senior Year. The movie was written by Andrew Knauer, Arthur Piello, and Brandon Scott Jones. It is a Paramount Pictures movie, with Netflix as the distributor. It is Wilson’s first movie since she starred in Cats and Jojo Rabbit in 2019.

While Wilson’s fans may have flocked to Senior Year, the movie earned mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. It only holds a 29% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Many critics found the plot to be predictable and few laughs, although Wilson’s performance earned praise. In his review for The Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper advised viewers to watch Wilson’s 2019 comedy Isn’t It Romantic instead of Senior Year. He called the new movie “a terribly unfunny, flatly executed and cheesy alleged comedy.”

Wilson’s next project is The Almond and The Seahorse, which will be her first drama. The movie co-stars Celyn Jones and centers on an archaeologist and architect who re-imagine their future after a traumatic brain injury separates them from the people they love. Charlotte Gainsbourg will also star in the movie, which was filmed in Liverpool and North Wales last year, reports Deadline. Tom Stern (Changeling) is directing with Jones, who co-wrote the script with Katie O’Reilly. It is based on a stage play by O’Reilly.