Premise: A teenage creates an underground zine at her high school to address the gender problems there and anonymously starts a movement.
Depending on which eye prescription I use, this is a movie that plays differently. If I use my high school prescription, when everything seemed much clearer more easily, it's a fun movie that addresses timely and important issues. If I use my current prescription, with vision that's been beat down over the years but appreciates more the times when I can see crisply, I see a sweet coming of age movie that really muddles the big topics it's going after. In other words, this is me giving myself cover with the lazy but effective "this movie may have just not been for me".
Mostly, I did enjoy this movie. I think I've more than established at this point that I'm a sucker for a good high school coming of age story. So, I'm a huge fan of Hadley Robinson in the lead role, Vivian. She's believable enough as a high schooler. It's possible to de-glam her enough to play someone "relatable". It's a great story about her finding her voice. The story is just convoluted enough to be fun without feeling impossibly unlikely. It populates the world well. I was surprised how well Lauren Tsai, as Vivian's best friend, played a high schooler. I remember her from the last season of Legion, where she already looked past high school age on screen, yet she fits here. The other girls in the class like Alycia Pascual-Pena and Sydney Park play recognizable types without feeling like lazy tropes. Nico Hiraga is a delightful manic pixie dream boy. Director Amy Poehler as Vivian's mom is just gravy. And the movie overall is just really good at sweet moments.
As a rule, the more front and center a high school movie makes a social justice issue, the clunkier it is. The best way around it is to create a world that's intentionally exaggerated. Mean Girls makes great points about bullying and the way women treat each other, and it can afford to be so obvious about it, because everyone in that school is extreme. I never look at it and think "that's my high school". Moxie can't decide how real it wants the high school to feel. It is not a subtle movie. The evil jock is cartoonishly manipulative and antagonistic. The amount that the administrators aren't concerned about what's going on with the student body is extreme yet treated like it should be believable. I don't know exactly how high schools are now, but I feel like they'd be working harder to shut down a list that goes to every student with "most bangable" awards. And, honestly, the student body barely feels real. It takes one woke student transferring in to magically make everyone start noticing the problems? I realize my thoughts are pretty scattered on my issues with the movie. Simply put, I never believed the world of the movie, which made it hard to invest in the stakes. It tried to take on too much.
Still, the coming-of-age and young romance stuff is still good enough to keep me favorable about the movie. I respect the attempt to tackle big topics (gender parity, racism and racial expectations, consent), even if the execution was a bit off. It's certainly an interesting pick as Amy Poehler's 2nd or 3rd movie as a director. Her first film was a TV movie called Dumb Prince, which I've never heard of and barely seems to exist. Her proper debut was Wine Country, which kept her very much in her comfort zone. Moxie is her first big swing and it makes me curious about what she'll try next.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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