Moxie review: not director Amy Poehler of the girl-power revolution

At one point in Netflix’s new movie directed by Amy Poehler Moxie, a group of teenage girls gather in a private room during a party to visit the douchey boys at their school. One of them shuffles a pack of playing cards and realizes that it appears on her face.

“Do you know what I just realized? The king is worth more than the queen, ”she says, as someone discovers the greatest secrets of the universe. ‘Why? The queen is the best. ”

Those oddly invented wakefulness swamps Moxie down, though it’s an otherwise sweet, empowering film about one girl gaining the confidence to stand up for herself and her peers. Poehler and the authors try to balance a wide range of issues, but fail to integrate them meaningfully into the story. It sometimes makes Moxie feels like a checklist of artificial social awareness.

[Ed. note: This review contains slight spoilers for Moxie.]

Photo: Colleen Hayes / Netflix

Based on a 2015 YA novel of the same name, Moxie follows the shy high school junior Vivian (Hadley Robinson) who becomes increasingly fed up with the sexist culture at her school. Each year, a group of popular boys, led by soccer captain Mitchell (Patrick Schwarzenegger, who plays the charming douchebag role with almost alarming finesse), compile a ranking of female students and give them derogatory titles such as “Most Bangable” and “Best stretch.’ When new student Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Peña) dares to speak out against Mitchell, she gets on the list. Fueled by this attack, and a Bikini Kill song that her mother (Amy Poehler) once played for her – Vivian throws all her anger into a porch she calls ‘Moxie’ and patches it all over her school .

The connection between Vivian to randomly remember the lyrics of ‘Rebel Girl’ and to find the old piece of zines of her mother, and then create her own zine, is thin. (Especially since she never actually talks to her mother about it.) But overall, it’s satisfying to see Vivian’s evolution from shy wallflower to leader, encouraged by anonymity. As more of the school – including the boys included – begin to catch up with the call for action from the Zine, they pull Sharpie hearts and stars on their hands to give solidarity. Soon Moxie grows from an anonymous publication for one woman to a core group of students who rally for change. It’s definitely refreshing to see a wide range of girls being drawn into the mix – and not just outsiders, as popular student Kaitlynn (Sabrina Haskett) and soccer captain Kiera (Sydney Park) are also taking part.

Some individual parts of Moxiehowever, just get uncomfortable and out of place. That queen-and-king line is not the only awkward dialogue. Lucy complains that her English lecture only consists of books by rich white dudes – which may have more impact than the first episode of Netflix Original Ginny & Georgia did not have a very similar scene, which aired a few weeks ago. There are also strange institutional devices at the beginning – a nightmare that Vivian cannot scream, as well as her unfriendly relevant essay question for college – that immediately disappear, only to be randomly referenced at the end of the film.

Photo: Colleen Hayes / Netflix

But the film’s biggest displeasure is how all the pieces are in place to really explore intersectionality, and eventually fall flat. At the end of the day, it’s more of a story about Vivian than about Moxie. Vivian never meaningfully agrees that she inherently benefits from the privileges her friends do not have: she is white, physical, and cisgendered. She is surrounded by a diverse cast, but the characters do not have their own agency – they are only in place to promote Moxie’s alertness (and therefore Vivian). Even in places where other characters take the lead, the film sticks to Vivian’s limited stance: Moxie pits Kiera against Mitchell for an athletics scholarship, but after the fall, the focus is not on Kiera. It’s about Vivian’s sadness and frustration, which she brings out in other characters, such as her new boyfriend (Nico Hiraga) and her mother.

Her relationship with her best friend Claudia (Lauren Tsai) brings this directly to the fore. Unlike the other girls involved with Moxie, Claudia comes from a first-generation Chinese family – because her mother worked tirelessly for her education, Claudia feels tremendous pressure to succeed and she cannot be suspended like the Vivian does not. Vivian may not realize it, even though she and Claudia have been best friends all their lives, and she becomes increasingly frustrated with Claudia for not participating in Moxie’s more rebellious activities. Claudia finally calls out Vivian for her callous behavior, but Vivian never offers more than a mumbled apology. At the end of the film, however, the tension dropped.

On MoxieHis honor is that Vivian’s selfish attitude is finally addressed, but it focuses specifically on how rude she is to her mother. It can be a meaningful emotional thread, except that their relationship is on the sidelines for most of the film, and that it really increases at the end for the sake of emotional catharsis. It’s easier to make a simple misunderstanding between mother and daughter – especially since Vivian was inspired by her mother’s rebellion days – than for the heroine to consider her own self-direction and personally correct her friends.

Poehler and the filmmakers continue Moxie with triumphant moments from the girls’ association, but by being more socially aware, they end up not doing much with their diverse cast. Overall, though, the film is definitely just positive: full of cheerful moments of victory, sweet and specific character relationships, and a unique character arc that is mostly satisfying to watch unfold. The problem is not it Moxie play in bad tropics – mostly do not. It’s just that Poehler and the crew have all the pieces of something bigger, and that they are not assembling them in the ways that will have the most impact.

Moxie is now stream on Netflix.