Barely Lethal (2015) - A Lesson in Squandering Potential & Entertainment for Teenage Girls
There are movies with great ingredients that cannot succeed in spite of themselves. 2015's teenage spy rom com Barely Lethal is sadly one of the prime example of that, because for all of the elements that might be deemed watchable or all of the things you might think would make it good, no amount of charisma can pull writing like this out of the garbage.
I am not one to over critique teenage girl movies while giving male fantasy a pass. I love Fast & Furious movies shamelessly, but I also will defend teenage girl franchises to the end of time. I can critique the issues with the Twilight movies while finding the vitriol directed at them to be absurd and disproportionate (Lindsay Ellis has an excellent video essay on this topic that I recommend to everyone). There is nothing wrong for making movies for or about teenagers, and there have been some excellent - or even just serviceable - ones in recent years! They can be problematic as all hell, but still elevate their material by respecting their audience (Hailee Steinfeld, star of this movie, went on to star in The Edge of Seventeen the next year which I really enjoyed; I'm desperate to draw parallels to the teen spy movie I was brought up on, D.E.B.S, but apparently that's a niche movie for little gay girls). The primary flaw with this movie is that it does not respect its audience of teenage girls, and I suspect a lot of that has to do with all of its high up production roles being filled by men who may not have the kindest attitudes towards teenage girls. Fun fact: Brett Ratner is the first listed producer on this movie! Punch me straight in the face.
The plot is every "I just want to be normal!" movie ever. You've seen every princess undercover movie ever, right? No? It's that, but with spies. Hailee Steinfeld plays 83, later Megan, raised from childhood at Samuel L Jackson's (!!!) assassin school for girls. She has tension with 84, a poorly accented Sophie Turner (!). On a mission to capture an arms dealer played by a very flat Jessica Alba (!!), 83 feigns death and uses this as her opportunity to be a Normal Teenage Girl by way of a Foreign Exchange Program and watching a lot of high school movies. High school hijinks occur! She has a crush on an airheaded musician with a passing resemblance to young Penn Badgley, instead of the guy who was Right In Front of Her Nose All Along! She gets told that a boy is into mascots and so she dresses as the mascot, because apparently in her high school movie research she went "Legally Blonde is too good of a movie and I guess about Harvard and therefore I will not watch that awful costume party scene". She gets slapped on the butt multiple times by a character we are later supposed to like, I guess?
Barely Lethal cannot keep itself in line. Hailee Steinfeld seems sweet and bounces nicely off the absurd plot construct, and bit players do well - by far the standouts are the comedy bit parts who play parents and teachers, Rob Huebel and Dan Fogler and Rachael Harris and a weird but shockingly decent cameo from Steve-O - but everything else about the cast in relation to the plot is flat out absurd. Jessica Alba is possibly the worst part, and it almost seems like her lines were recorded in post, and Samuel L Jackson does not want to be there. Topher Grace is inexplicably in a photograph in the film with a terrible fake moustache? That was possibly the biggest laugh I had, and it wasn't a joke.
In the film's reveal and climactic fight scene, after all manner of nonsensical garbage has occurred, they seem to think that - in 2015 - it's totally okay to drop a slur for transgender people in a fight as a way of demeaning someone's appearance. We are expected, at so many points, to suspend disbelief to such an extent - that high schoolers act like that, that characters would behave in certain ways, that actions would take place in specific sequences - but there's a limit to what can and can't be dropped as movie stuff. This movie wasn't made in 1987, or even in 2004 like the very problematic but also very gay spy girl movie D.E.B.S, it was made three years ago. Teenage girls aren't idiots. They don't just want movies where pretty people kiss. They have brains and they want to be made to laugh and they don't want to be talked down to. Make stuff for them.
At the end of the final confrontation, a man bursts through the door to save the day in the face of our ostensibly capable teenage heroine. Regardless of what the movie's premise is, it's clear what it thinks of women, and of teenage girls.
Rating: 3/10 - There are a few decent performances and one or two good scenes, not to mention a funny and inexplicable photo of Topher Grace in the world's most ridiculous moustache. All of that to say that there is no reason to see this movie. Just google that photo.
I am not one to over critique teenage girl movies while giving male fantasy a pass. I love Fast & Furious movies shamelessly, but I also will defend teenage girl franchises to the end of time. I can critique the issues with the Twilight movies while finding the vitriol directed at them to be absurd and disproportionate (Lindsay Ellis has an excellent video essay on this topic that I recommend to everyone). There is nothing wrong for making movies for or about teenagers, and there have been some excellent - or even just serviceable - ones in recent years! They can be problematic as all hell, but still elevate their material by respecting their audience (Hailee Steinfeld, star of this movie, went on to star in The Edge of Seventeen the next year which I really enjoyed; I'm desperate to draw parallels to the teen spy movie I was brought up on, D.E.B.S, but apparently that's a niche movie for little gay girls). The primary flaw with this movie is that it does not respect its audience of teenage girls, and I suspect a lot of that has to do with all of its high up production roles being filled by men who may not have the kindest attitudes towards teenage girls. Fun fact: Brett Ratner is the first listed producer on this movie! Punch me straight in the face.
The plot is every "I just want to be normal!" movie ever. You've seen every princess undercover movie ever, right? No? It's that, but with spies. Hailee Steinfeld plays 83, later Megan, raised from childhood at Samuel L Jackson's (!!!) assassin school for girls. She has tension with 84, a poorly accented Sophie Turner (!). On a mission to capture an arms dealer played by a very flat Jessica Alba (!!), 83 feigns death and uses this as her opportunity to be a Normal Teenage Girl by way of a Foreign Exchange Program and watching a lot of high school movies. High school hijinks occur! She has a crush on an airheaded musician with a passing resemblance to young Penn Badgley, instead of the guy who was Right In Front of Her Nose All Along! She gets told that a boy is into mascots and so she dresses as the mascot, because apparently in her high school movie research she went "Legally Blonde is too good of a movie and I guess about Harvard and therefore I will not watch that awful costume party scene". She gets slapped on the butt multiple times by a character we are later supposed to like, I guess?
Barely Lethal cannot keep itself in line. Hailee Steinfeld seems sweet and bounces nicely off the absurd plot construct, and bit players do well - by far the standouts are the comedy bit parts who play parents and teachers, Rob Huebel and Dan Fogler and Rachael Harris and a weird but shockingly decent cameo from Steve-O - but everything else about the cast in relation to the plot is flat out absurd. Jessica Alba is possibly the worst part, and it almost seems like her lines were recorded in post, and Samuel L Jackson does not want to be there. Topher Grace is inexplicably in a photograph in the film with a terrible fake moustache? That was possibly the biggest laugh I had, and it wasn't a joke.
In the film's reveal and climactic fight scene, after all manner of nonsensical garbage has occurred, they seem to think that - in 2015 - it's totally okay to drop a slur for transgender people in a fight as a way of demeaning someone's appearance. We are expected, at so many points, to suspend disbelief to such an extent - that high schoolers act like that, that characters would behave in certain ways, that actions would take place in specific sequences - but there's a limit to what can and can't be dropped as movie stuff. This movie wasn't made in 1987, or even in 2004 like the very problematic but also very gay spy girl movie D.E.B.S, it was made three years ago. Teenage girls aren't idiots. They don't just want movies where pretty people kiss. They have brains and they want to be made to laugh and they don't want to be talked down to. Make stuff for them.
At the end of the final confrontation, a man bursts through the door to save the day in the face of our ostensibly capable teenage heroine. Regardless of what the movie's premise is, it's clear what it thinks of women, and of teenage girls.
Rating: 3/10 - There are a few decent performances and one or two good scenes, not to mention a funny and inexplicable photo of Topher Grace in the world's most ridiculous moustache. All of that to say that there is no reason to see this movie. Just google that photo.
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