Thirty-some
years ago, a film like this might have generated all kinds of controversy,
regardless of its merits. It could be
considered a sign of social progress it now only inspires shrugs. Nonetheless, gender-oriented vigilantism
should never be such a hum drum affair. Indeed,
that is about the size of Austin Chick’s Girls
Against Boys (trailer
here), which
opens today in New York.
Shae
thought she was going to have a lovely romantic weekend with her technically
married boyfriend. Instead, he dumps
her, having resolved to make his marriage work for the sake of his young
daughter. His timing is lousy, but
frankly this is sort of the right thing to do.
He will pay for it though. First,
the depressed Shae turns to her co-worker Lu for support. At Lu’s prompting, they embark on an all
night bender, culminating in the loft of a group of hipsters everyone in the
audience can tell are blindingly bad news.
Unfortunately, Shae is so disoriented she leaves with Simon, the worst
of the lot, who does exactly what we suspect he will.
The
next morning, she reports the crime to the police, who are ridiculously
disinterested. One would think any
red-blooded NYPD cop would relish the opportunity to roust a pretentious
Greenpoint “artist,” but evidently not. However,
Lu is perfectly willing to lead her into a Thelma
& Louise style revenge killing spree.
There
are two paths a film like this can take.
Either it becomes a dark psychological study in which viewers are
supposed be horrified by the acts the two “girls” commit against the “boys,” or
it should be a cathartic exercise in frontier justice-by proxy. Yet, Chick tries to steer a middle course,
suggesting maybe on the one hand, the guys deserve some form of cosmic
retribution, but then again, there seems to be something a little off or
overboard about Lu’s plunge into binge murder.
The resulting lukewarm tone leaves little lasting impression. Even when the women get medieval on Simon, GAB’s only halfway memorable scene,
Chick chickens out, wrapping it up just as it starts illicit an emotional
response.
Danielle
Panabaker is actually pretty good covering Shae’s considerable range of extreme
emotions and Nicole LaLiberte can flash some seriously crazy eyes as Lu. The rest of the cast just isn’t bad enough to
stand out in any way. One wonders if the
word generic was used in the casting notices.
