Hello, bonjour, and welcome back to my channel!
Sorry, I don’t know why I decided to start that way. Maybe just to pay homage to the early 2000s, because that’s certainly the vibe that I got from the film that I want to talk about today: Do Revenge.
Now, I’m also doing a film studies project at school, so I’ve been thinking about how I watch a film and more about the actual film making process. However, this is not the film that I shall analyze first. It just can’t be. It’s not that good. On the other hand, it is good enough to warrant me writing a piece for it, so here this piece is.
Honestly, I saw some reviews saying that this film is this generation’s Mean Girls, and to those people I’d just like to say: FIE! HOW DARE YOU!
Mean Girls is iconic for, in my humble opinion, three reasons: characters, quotability, and actors. Let’s look at all three and then compare it to Do Revenge.
First, characters. While Mean Girls had THE popular girl trope in the form of Regina, Karen, and Gretchen, it also managed to turn the tropes on their heads. Karen, the “dumb blond,” is actually dumb, but she’s also talented in other ways, and is in many ways the most caring and innocent out of all the characters in the film. She is not just the “dumb blond,” despite being dumb and blonde. Gretchen, on the other hand, is the gossip girl, but she is also sensitive and unhappy. She likes Regina, admires her, even, and is hurt to have lost her friend when Cady comes into the friend group. She doesn’t deal with it well, but I think we can all emphasize with a person who fears losing their closest friendship. And finally, Regina George herself, the Queen Bee. She is truly a work of art: she is manipulative, beautiful, cunning, selfish. All of that is in the writing, yes, but it is also in the film making. When she walks by, whether it is the way the other extras show us how they react to her or the way she reacts to them, we as the audience know—she is the real deal. And don’t even get me started on Cady. We as the audience slowly, as she does, come to the realization she’s changed. But even then, her progression is slow, not all at once, and we understand why she’s become the way she is.
What does Do Revenge have? I do think that the characters are very modern and reflect a lot of the youth today, especially the side-hand comments about race and ethnicity and inequality. They are comments that are sort of just thrown out there, and I appreciate the film not trying to make a big deal out of the fact that the main character Drea is not white, and I appreciate the film trying to show us the way that sometimes, being too politically conscious can be stifling (see scene when Drea tells off a girl for ‘not supporting a fellow woman of color”). Also, I like that the film doesn’t focus on the fact that one character is gay and the other isn’t white. However, Drea, and Eleanor’s as well, transition is abrupt and sudden. All of a sudden, she’s a changed woman, and Eleanor’s lost herself in popularity? We need a bit more than snarky commentary from Talia Ryder’s character to convince us as the audience member that Eleanor’s changed, especially if you want to make the final twist more convincing.
And have the characters changed, really? Drea still forgets Eleanor’s birthday. Just because she doesn’t want to get into Yale anymore doesn’t mean she’s a completely different person. And Eleanor threatened Drea’s mom’s job? Like, hello, I really don’t think that is something either of them would forget. And why would Talia Ryder’s character (sorry, I really can’t remember her name, I just remember her as Max’s little sister) just be so OK with her brother being treated the way he is by the girls? I get that he’s not a good person and she knows, but also that’s her brother. My brother could be a piece of crap but he’s still my brother and I would defend him against the world.
However, I would like to say that there is one thing that I really enjoyed about the characterization of Do Revenge, and that is the characterization of Tara. I hate the stories that paint these popular girls as complete and utter monsters. They’re teenagers, and we might be rowdy and we might be terrible and mean and condescending, but we’re kids. We don’t spend time with a person so often, often enough to be best friends with them like Tara and Drea did, and hate their guts entirely. It’s hard to pretend and lie. So, I was really happy to see that Tara did care about Drea, that she actually cared enough about Drea to ask Max about her and even reach out to her. She’s still not a great friend by any means, abandoning her best friend in her time of need, but she’s not a complete heartless monster.
Next, let’s talk about quotability. All I can remember from Do Revenge is few quotes on being 17, which I think I only remember because of Olivia Rodrigo’s Brutal, which I only like because it mentions being 17, because I am 17. (That was a roller coaster of thoughts, sorry.) But in general, I don’t remember anything like “fetch” or “you can’t just ask someone why they’re white” or even “we wear pink on Wednesdays.” There are lines that try to be something (what comes to mind is, actually, all of the scenes between Maya Hawke’s character and Talia Ryder’s character), but they lack the special something that makes Mean Girls so quotable. Sorry, Robinson and Ballard, you guys just aren’t on the level of iconability (pretty sure that’s not a word) that Tina Fey is on. And in general, the writing of Do Revenge left me with questions. For instance, why on history of Earth do these writers seem to think that getting into Ivys are easy? Jesus Christ, I’ve been struggling too long with this for them to just make a character (Eleanor), who up until now has not shown any type of academic prowess, to casually drop that she got into Brown and Columbia. I can’t deal with this.
Finally, actors. Mean Girls gave us Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried. Do Revenge’s acting is fine. But Maya Hawke didn’t always sell the revenge focused girl, and Camilla Mendes didn’t always sell the obnoxious selfish person the character is. So, I don’t expect this film to propel them into international stardom the way Mean Girls did for its stars.
OK, those are my thoughts on Do Revenge. I did actually like the film, but I really don’t think it measures up to the likes of Mean Girls or Heathers. So it doesn’t touch the masters, but it’s a fun watch nonetheless.
To being 17!
Happy Sunday!!
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