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"Do Revenge" is an example of that movie subgenre today, and unfortunately, except maybe amongst a handful of independent producers more distant from Hollywood, I think that this genre is either dead or nearly unrecognizable, and I'll explain why.
But first, how did I wind up randomly watching a Netflix movie that wasn't in theaters? Well, in a roundabout way, it's due to the actress Paris Berelc. I'd seen some photos posted of her in the "Skylar Storm" spandex superheroine outfit from the days when she was in the Mighty Med and Lab Rats action/adventure series on Disney XD (for those unfamiliar, it has a vibe similar to The Thundermans or Sky High). Looking her up, I noticed that even today, Paris Berelc is only 23 years old, and so I wondered what she was doing more recently, and whether any of it might involve superheroine roles or tight outfits.
Immediately, I came upon "Do Revenge", a high school 'black comedy' from 2022, in which Berelc plays Meghan, a member of an upper echelon clique at an elite private school whose grads mostly go on to Ivy League. Meghan is only one of the supporting characters, however, so I'll have to elaborate further on the superhero/comic book connections of this movie.
For one thing, another supporting role is played by Rish Shah, who played Kamran in the Ms Marvel TV show (which I hope you didn't see, but bless you if you got all the way through that mess). The main role is played by Camila Mendes, who was Veronica in Riverdale. She's fairly high-profile, and although I only ever watched a handful of episodes of that dark CW take on Archie Comics, I'm sure you probably recognize what she looks like (see Mendes below in the Julie Newmar outfit she wore this past Halloween). The other main role is played by Maya Hawke, whom I was not really familiar with, but who is the daughter of action star Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman (Poison Ivy, G-Girl). And then finally, if such things interest you, Sarah Michelle Gellar (aka Buffy) plays the headmistress (although they call her 'headmaster' for Current Year reasons) of the private school.
Here's Mendes as Catwoman (please note: this costume does not appear in this movie)
- cami mendes as catwoman.jpg (24.99 KiB) Viewed 618 times
As you might guess from the listing of the creators above, very little good can come out of a double activist/writer combination, despite the obvious influences that "Do Revenge" takes from both 90s romcom classics like Mean Girls and Clueless, and an apparent idea lifted from Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (the concept of the two main characters swapping crimes, so they don't get caught).
So, the viewer expects to tune in and see a romantic comedy with some "mean girl" plot twists in the 90s tradition. But what the viewer actually gets is a lecture in which the beginning and the end of the movie are pure didacticism with "lessons" being taught, as if you're the student and the director/writer is the professor. The middle of the movie is mostly free of this stuff, but that's only because they have to move through the plot without making a lot of speeches.
This kind of messaging is rampant in movies these days from certain companies (of which Netflix is definitely one). But what's surprising is that, first of all, they try to pass it off as part of being "funny". It isn't. And secondly, that there is so damn much of these interspersals - one of the worst cases I've seen of it outside just simply making a whole movie with nothing but the Narrative in it (such as 'She Said').
Even the movie title itself is a reference to the "Do Crime" meme (as in "Be Gay, Do Crime") which is popular among Gen Z now but, if you know your stuff, you'll remember that it originated in the late 90s with the founding of Crimethinc (an Antifa-style publisher and anarchist group). "Do Crime" has now penetrated the mainstream almost to the extent of other phrases like "Defund the Police" or "From the River to the Sea".
In the first 30 minutes of "Do Revenge", here are actual dialogue quotes that you will subjected to if you watch it:
"woman of color". "they tried to do an all-white production of Hamilton". "Greta Thunberg." "safe space". "queer". "vegan". "Instagram witches".
"restorative". "cis hetero men". "female Identifying students". "enby". "problematic". "toxic". "slut shame". "troll". "policed by shame". "misogynist". "fake woke". "narcissist". "performative". "patriarchy incarnate". "manic pixie dream boy", it just goes on and on.
Then a bunch of plot happens, mostly at parties. It's funny how you never see this group of students in actual class or even in the hallways.
There are also hardly any Asian students at this elite private school, which seems a little weird and not very "inclusive" for 2022.
A lesbian kiss happens at 1:14 but the hotness is utterly drained out of it. It's there just mostly to check a box.
When we start getting to the last third of the movie, the rhetoric revs up again:
"optics". "the rich white girl ruins the scholarship of a student of color." "patriarchy is on the way out". "Masculinity Examined: how to untangle the toxic roots of patriarchy". But by this time, it's lot less about "telling" (expository dialogue) and more about "showing" with regards to how the movie wraps up: the successful relationships in the movie are 1) between two artsy and quirky lesbians and 2) between two "brown" people (as the woke parlance goes). The rich white boy is shown to be the clear villain by the conclusion.
I should also point out that even though the 90s romcoms this movie is aping were all PG-13, "Do Revenge" somehow feels the need to be Rated-R (using language like "cunt", considerable drug use, and mentioning of climaxing, etc.) even though its topic is about high school and there are no murders or violence like a horror thriller would have. Another reason it's R is because the main character makes a "sex tape", around which the plot revolves, but that footage is very short and we don't get to see much of the undulations and gyrations of Mendes at all. No side boob or a bit of nipple slip. Nothing. What kind of a "sex tape" is that, really?
So, what I thought I sat down to watch for fun and maybe a little bit of sexy times wound up being a lecture that battered me over the head. I even got to hear the voices of Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna peppered into the soundtrack, obviously for how the director thinks those artists personified 90s feminism in pop culture.
I can't recommend this movie, because if you want to see a flick like this, you can just go back to the classics of the 80s and 90s and early 2000s (I've mentioned EuroTrip and Tomcats in the past) and they are so much better, regardless of whether a current Ivy League professor considers them "problematic" or "toxic" now.
Adding to the lack of appeal is that while Camila Mendes looks beautiful, as she did in Riverdale, her co-star Maya Hawke isn't hot. The director means to convey her as hot in a Current Year Sense, but no matter how much makeup and clothing they slather on her, she looks like a thin boy.
Her character is there for representation, as a human shield against criticism by what passes for journalisming these days, and it seemed to work:
the movie got a high rating with critics.
Another actress who is there for representation is Alisha Ilhan Bo, a Somali actress who is extremely beautiful. She only gets to be in a supporting role, however. If I was the director, I would have put her in more scenes and given her more dialogue, developing her character a bit more. She's supposedly the daughter of a prominent politician running for office, and yet we never see her Dad or *any of the parents at all*! (The only adult in the movie is Sarah Michelle Gellar). Probably the hottest scene in the movie is when the man-boy is on top of curvy gorgeous Alisha and they're about to have sex, but then it's ruined when she gets up and walks away from him for something 'toxic' he says. It's a very Current Year scenario.
In case you think I'm overemphasizing the "progressive" onslaught in this movie, even after I've described all of it, please take a gander at what
co-writer Celeste Ballard told LGBT publication Gayety on their Tiktok channel. The agenda is plain and open.
Don't watch it. Not even in the Barbara Streisand Effect sense. Thank you.
