D.E.B.S. (USA) (Samuel Goldwyn) (2005) ***Year: 2005iMDB
Director: Angela Robinson Cast: Sarah Foster, Jordana Brewster, Meagan Good, Devon Aoki, Jill Ritchie
The Debs (which may mean either simply debutantes, or Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength) are teenagers selected to be high-class secret agents based on the hidden meanings disguised among various answer choices in the standard SAT test. The premise leads us to a group of four such teenagers that are soon to engage one of the deadliest villains in the world, the elusive Lucy Diamond (Brewster - Fast and the Furious). However, it turns out that the villain, as deadly as she may be is in essence a young woman looking for love which she may find where she least expects it - one of the debs.
D.E.B.S. mixes parody of spy movies and teenage movies with some almost serious elements about women looking for love and understanding (and finding it in another woman in this case, so I guess you can add that factor to the mix). The result is clearly uneven, although it is hard to blame one particular aspect for the failures and congratulate others for working well. Some of the humor doesn't work, but some of it is funny (like Devon Aoki's frenglish character for example). Also, Jordana Brewster is quite magnetic and manages to actually do a good job at portraying her character threading well the line between genres and avoiding ridicule.
D.E.B.S premiered at Sundance in 2004 and was released limited in US in 2005 in a very strange pattern that started with 45 screens in the first week which were then reduced to 8 and then 2 screens. While the movie might have a hard time finding a well defined target audience, it is bound to never find one under such genius distribution.
Posted by TheCasualCritic on April 14, 2005 10:22 AM | TrackBack