Vivian (Hadley Robinson) and Claudia (Lauren Tsai) are best friends, considered meek amongst their peers, if at all. When Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Pena) moves to their school, she receives the complete asshole treatment from school jock Mitchell (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who just seems unable to handle the fact that she’s not interested. Lucy thinks that Mitchell, and his attitude, and his influence, and his friends, are dangerous, but I think Lucy’s dangerous and I like it, as I readied myself to see what flavour comeuppance she had in store. Instead, she inspires Vivian to follow in her mother’s rebellious feminist footsteps, creating a zine called Moxie. Vivian secretly puts Moxie in the women’s bathrooms, uniting the girls against any and all sexist regiments in the school. Pretty soon Vivian is more popular than ever, and introducing change in the school for good.
I had little idea what to make of Moxie going in, but I knew that Amy Poehler had also directed Wine Country; a movie that bored me to no end in 2019. For Poehler, perhaps it could all come down to picking a more exciting project this time, and Moxie fit into the teen genre that generally appeals to me when done well. It was an ugly start, but I’m prepared to concede that it’s mostly on me, as I prickled at the potentially triggering, unsure what wider message the movie might be pursuing. For instance, when Lucy dodges a question about The Great Gatsby, annoyed it’s another book about a spoilt white man written by a white man when there are so many other voices out there, I’d insist that it doesn’t stop The Great Gatsby being a cultural, or at least historical, classic. There’s nothing wrong with her objection, in fact it would make for an excellent essay premise, but the issue is not that they are studying The Great Gatsby; the issue would be if they were ONLY studying The Great Gatsby, and there’s not enough evidence to suggest they are. Diversity is inclusive.
The girls also baulk at the objectifiable rating of women, but the movie also includes Viv and Claudia literally having a conversation referring to Seth (Nico Hiraga) as ‘Seth the Shrimp’; implying that it’s his growth-spurt over the summer that now opens him up to being attractive. The movie surely has to be aware of its own hypocrisy… right? I’m not sure how many of the movie’s target audience would be. Similar to what I said in my Promising Young Woman review, it’s easy to criticise the parts of human interaction that you don’t like, but there’s a wider picture in play; I’ve always seen it that boys idiotically jostle and peacock, and girls hold the power as to when, if, and how they choose to relieve that masculine angst and posturing. Of course, not ALL girls; not all women are interested or benefit from that dynamic, which is fair enough, but that’s no different to saying ‘not ALL men’; a phrase which the feminist argument sometimes has a hard time accepting. I may be ignorant, reading too deeply into my own focuses and experiences, but like all well-adjusted people, I yearn to learn from different perspectives all the time, and as Kaitlynn (Sabrina Haskett) says about men shirking out on ‘women’s’ issues, I feel encouraged to give my thoughts.
Moreover, I felt that the character of Mitchell was completely over the top – he spits in the soda in an act of hostility, but if this was Promising Young Woman, Lucy just drinks it and we suddenly have a weird romance brewing. I was more appropriately affronted by the school Principal Shelly (Marcia Gay Harden), sending Kaitlynn home for wearing a tank top (ugh!), and I’d be shocked if any school official used the term ‘sticks and stones’ in the current day so flippantly, but then again I could believe a lot. But there comes a time when you have to choose to accept that Moxie is a movie; archetypes may be exaggerated for dramatic effect, as well to simplify concerns to help get the message across. This movie aims to highlight female inequality in all forms and, although the movie searches for examples with a blunt catch-all net, calling out injustices can’t be bad. I really liked the way the girls of different walks of high-school life were established off-hand in their cliques, and the way they came together felt natural; it’s an outcome as old as time (at least as old as The Breakfast Club) but I still admired it. I also felt for Claudia, who explained herself perfectly when she said she just had to do things her own way, due to a deeper cultural pressure that the other girls hadn’t contemplated. I rallied behind the cause that Kiera (Sydney Park) wasn’t recognised as a premier sports player in the school, denied the reward that should’ve come with her success; another issue I’d like to think we are rectifying in the real world. And Seth is totally cute – he can’t remember his physics homework but he remembers that Vivian used to nurture spiders back in kindergarten. They say you remember what you care about! What a keeper.
As much as I loved Booksmart – another movie about female teenagers finding their place – there are bits of this that I think are even better. But it’s in plotting a course from beginning to end that lets Moxie down, or so I’ve concluded. Moxie doesn’t have that tight through-line guiding it along, and when things go bad in the final act, Vivian falls so heavily that the movie then wraps up way too easily, considering her meltdown; the teacher comes on board with the girls way too fast and Vivian never effectively patches things up with her mother, but they’re just okay. I actually think that this movie going in so many different directions is a blessing and a curse; having so many conflicting and compounding issues at play is messy, but that’s life – people out there, friends’ circles and groups of girls, must be dealing with inequality, sexual assault, cultural demands and more all at once, and by this movie dipping a toe into each issue just a little bit, it gives its viewers something to latch on to, even if it’s only a moment or two. And I like this movie more for the ideas it reinforces, more than its execution or argument.
And if I only take one thing away from this movie (and I’ll be taking more), it’ll be the revelation that regular playing cards value the King over the Queen; an everyday example of something patriarchal that I’d never considered. Personally, I’m not for dismantling the social pillars of masculinity and femininity, but when it comes to ranking one sex over the other, I’d advocate a change in something as trivial as a deck of playing cards. Someone, come up with a funky alternative and I’ll jump on board. I’ve got stars and hearts on my hands today!
3.5
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