Girls Against Boys

GIRLS AGAINST BOYS is another cheap revenge picture with a battle-of-the-sexes slant. It feels very much like a cheap I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE remake and even features an actor or two who appeared in one of those films, I can't remember which. This one seems to have even less plot than usual and is merely a string of set-pieces of the main two characters going around and butchering unsuspecting blokes, some of them deserving, some of them not.

I find films like this one almost entirely devoid of merit. The cheap digital look of the production is almost anti-cinematic and an example of everything I DON'T want to see in a film. The acting is generally weak and exaggerated and the violence brief and not very shocking. The subject matter is distasteful but the approach is so lame that none of it is possible to take seriously.

Shae (Danielle Panabaker) is a college student/part-time bartender. She is having an affair with a married man. He tries to break it off and reveals that he has a daughter. She is shocked and decides to go partying. After a night out, she gets raped. She then befriends a co-worker Lulu (Nicole LaLiberte) who turns out to be a psycho and helps her get revenge.

This is Death Wish for girls. At least that's the goal. The concept is fine. Filmmaker Austin Chick is definitely trying to inject some feminist anti-male theories into the start of the film. It forms the justification for Nicole to seek revenge on all men. Nicole's character is so obviously crazy right from the start. Any justification is meaningless. Danielle Panabaker's acting is very wooden. She's trying for a stun look after the rape and then the murders. But she's not Charles Bronson. It just comes off as stiff acting. If anything, this movie is an indictment of female empowerment. Instead of rooting for the death of a rapist, we're thrown as to who to truly root for.... The Rapist or The Murderers. This is a flawed film but the anti-male bent seems to have riled up the critics.

Right from the start it was a pretty good representation of art imitating life, pretty girls party with guys they meet at a bar and it goes wrong pretty quickly, a few cliches with the straw sucker and the annoying ex (played by the Russian gangster guy from Limitless) doing his best bad guy once again. This movie kinda reminds me of the premise of Promising Young Woman, take advantage of a woman and you may get away with it 1000 times, pick the wrong victim and you're history and you didn't even see it coming and if you're lucky? It's just an Urban myth that keeps you straight and moral in your interactions with people. If you're not? Scissors or swords or maybe a 9mm to the upper body. Worth a watch, it's no I Spit On Your Grave or House at the End of the Street but it's a light and quick flick you will probably enjoy if you like Indie type flicks that suspend reality (ie: no cops, no repercussions, no questions, just blind justice.

It's pretty obvious that even the media critics, who get paid to watch movies and are supposed to have greater insight than the average joe, didn't understand this movie. They were too busy looking for the elements of what ever genre they had already consigned the movie to and when those elements weren't there, instead of maybe wondering what they missed they simply wrote it off as a failed movie. To be fair, maybe you have to see it at least twice to pick up the hints that tell you what the real story is. I won't point them out because that would be too much of a spoiler but, to anyone who reads reviews before they see a movie, don't be sidetracked by those who call it a "revenge flick", or a "slasher flick", whether they liked it or disdained it as an example of those genres, and look for more.

It was a cheap New York Thelma & Louise. I am glad there wasn't that much blood and gore. I have to admit I didn't think how come they didn't get caught until I read Kathe M review. It is the only time I almost cried when one of the characters died.