Moxie Review: Not Girl-Power Revolution Director Amy Poehler’s Goal

At one point in Netflix’s new Amy Poehler-directed film Moxie, A group of teenage girls gather in a private room at their school to party about the Douki boys. One of them shuffles a deck of cards, feeling the blur on his face.

“You know what I realized?” The king is of more value than the queen, ”she says, discovering in the air the greatest mysteries of the universe. “Why? The queen is the best.”

He strangely collides with a formidable swamp Moxie Below, even though it is an otherwise endearing, empowering film about a girl gaining confidence to stand up for herself and her peers. Poehler and the author try to balance a wide range of issues, but fail to meaningfully integrate them into the story. Who sometimes makes Moxie Feel like a list of artificial social awareness.

[Ed. note: This review contains slight spoilers for Moxie.]

Based on the 2015 YA novel of the same name, Moxie Shy follows high-school junior Vivian (Hedley Robinson), who suffers from a rapidly growing sexist culture at her school. Every year, a group of popular boys, led by football captain Mitchell (Patrick Schwarzenegger, who almost exits the catchy-douchebag role with alarming ingenuity), roll out a ranking of female students, making them “the most banged up “And as the title is found. “Best Rack.” When new student Lucy (Alicia Pascal-Peña) dares to speak out against Michelle, he is blasted off the list. Hurt by the attack, and a bikini kill song her mom (Amy Poehler) played for her at one time – Vivian puts all her melody into a flimsy, she calls it “moxie” and makes fun of him throughout school.

The relationship between Vivian randomly memorizing the lyrics to “Rebel Girl” and discovering her mother’s old enthusiasm, then making her own zine, is thin. (Especially since she never really … talks to her mom about it.) But in general, it’s satisfying to see Vivian’s development as a leader from shy Wallflower to oblivion. As many boys from the school are involved – begin to catch the zine’s call to action, they pull their hands up to indicate their solidarity to Shardy Hearts and the Stars. Soon, Moxie grows from a female-anonymous publication to a core group of students rallying for change. It is certainly refreshing that a wide variety of girls have been drawn into the mix – not just as outsiders, with Carina (Sydney Park) joining popular students Katiline (Sabrina Haskett) and football captains.

Some individual parts of MoxieHowever, just as strange and out of place. That queen-and-king line is not the only Clooney dialogue. Lucy complains that the English reading assigned to her only includes books from wealthy white friends – which may have an impact on Netflix’s first episode. Guinea and Georgia There was not a very similar scene that aired a few weeks ago. There are also strange framing devices at the beginning – a nightmare incapable of screaming Vivian as well as her unintentionally relevant college essay questions – that immediately disappear, only to be randomly referenced near the end of the film.

But the film’s biggest disagreement is how all its pieces are in order to actually examine internationalism, and instead eventually fall flat. At the end of the day, it is more about Vivian than about Moxie. Vivian never meaningfully comes to terms with the fact that she benefits from privileges her friends do not: she is white, capable, and characterless. She is surrounded by a diverse cast, but those characters do not have their own agency – they are only meant to promote the beauty (and therefore Vivian’s) of Moxie. Even in places where other characters take the lead, the film rests on Vivian’s limited approach: Moxie pits Kirya against Michèle for an athletic scholarship, but after the result, the focus is not on Kaira . It is at the sadness and despair of Vivian, whom she takes in her new lover (Nico Hirga) and other characters like her mother.

Her relationship with her best friend Claudia (Lauren Tsai) brings it most directly. Unlike the other girls involved in Moxie, Claudia comes from a first-generation Chinese family – because her mother has worked tirelessly for her education, Claudia feels a lot of pressure to succeed, and Vivian feels the way Can be prevented, cannot afford to postpone it. Vivian fails to realize this, even though she and Claudia have been best friends throughout her life, and he becomes increasingly frustrated with Claudia for not engaging in Moxie’s more rebellious activities. Claudia finally calls Vivian out for her disgusting behavior, but Vivian never apologizes to anyone. By the end of the film, however, any tension has been removed.

Service MoxieVivian’s selfish attitude is eventually credited to this, but it is particularly focused on how rude he is to his mother. This can be a meaningful emotional thread, except that for the majority of the film, their relationship is sidelined, only for emotional catharsis to actually end up rambling on. It is easy to reconcile a simple mother-daughter misunderstanding – especially since Vivian was inspired by her mother’s rebellious days – for the heroine to consider her self-centeredness and make personal modifications for her friends.

Pohler and imbue filmmaker Moxie With the triumphant moments of the girls being reunited, though by trying to be more socially aware, they are not really doing much with their diverse cast. Overall, though, the film is definitely a pure positive: full of jubilant moments of victory, sweet and distinctive character relationships, and an eccentric character arc that is satisfying to watch more and more often. This is not the issue Moxie Plays in bad tropes – for the most part, it is not. It’s just that Poehler and crew have more than anything, and they don’t gather in the ways that make the most impact.

Moxie Is now Streaming on netflix.