← Back to Reviews
in
Do Revenge
Netflix provided a serious budget for 2022's Do Revenge, a lavishly mounted, well acted, and edgy black comedy that is basically Mean Girls meets Strangers on a Train, with just a dash of Clueless that had this reviewer going until a third act plot twist that made no sense.
Drea is a bitchy campus queen bee who's junior year is ruined when her self-absorbed boyfriend, Max, leaks a sex tape starring her. Eleanor is a lonely lesbian social outcast who is destroyed when a girl named Carissa, who she was crushing on, tells the whole school that Eleanor came on to her. Of course, Drea and Eleanor cross paths, share stories, decide revenge is the answer and the only way to assure that they get away with it is that Eleanor go after Max and Drea go after Carissa.
Director and screenwriter Jennifer Kaytin Robsinson has provided a story that is hardly original, so she decides to disguise its lack of imagination with a lot of overly clever dialogue, stylish camera work, and some truly impressive production values that almost make the viewer forget that everything that goes on here actually came from other better movies.
The setting is another one of those glitzy California high schools where kids are never observed studying or going to class but by the end of the movie, they have all gotten acceptance letters from Ivy League schools. As a matter of fact, the climax of the film actually takes place at what is called an admissions party where to get in, you have to turn in your cell phone and show your Ivy League school acceptance letter. There is some entertainment value in watching Drea and Eleanor's plan play out, but a surprise plot twist at the beginning of the final act took me out of the story, not to mention this plan produced a lot more collateral damage than it should have.
Robinson does get some first rate performances from a largely unknown cast, with standout work from Camila Mendes as Drea, Austin Abrams as the smarmy Max, and especially Maya Hawke as the complex Eleanor. There's also an impressive unbilled turn from Sarah Michelle Gellar as the school's headmaster. It's a little longer than it needed to be and the climactic plot twist doesn't really work, but there is some entertainment value here.
Netflix provided a serious budget for 2022's Do Revenge, a lavishly mounted, well acted, and edgy black comedy that is basically Mean Girls meets Strangers on a Train, with just a dash of Clueless that had this reviewer going until a third act plot twist that made no sense.
Drea is a bitchy campus queen bee who's junior year is ruined when her self-absorbed boyfriend, Max, leaks a sex tape starring her. Eleanor is a lonely lesbian social outcast who is destroyed when a girl named Carissa, who she was crushing on, tells the whole school that Eleanor came on to her. Of course, Drea and Eleanor cross paths, share stories, decide revenge is the answer and the only way to assure that they get away with it is that Eleanor go after Max and Drea go after Carissa.
Director and screenwriter Jennifer Kaytin Robsinson has provided a story that is hardly original, so she decides to disguise its lack of imagination with a lot of overly clever dialogue, stylish camera work, and some truly impressive production values that almost make the viewer forget that everything that goes on here actually came from other better movies.
The setting is another one of those glitzy California high schools where kids are never observed studying or going to class but by the end of the movie, they have all gotten acceptance letters from Ivy League schools. As a matter of fact, the climax of the film actually takes place at what is called an admissions party where to get in, you have to turn in your cell phone and show your Ivy League school acceptance letter. There is some entertainment value in watching Drea and Eleanor's plan play out, but a surprise plot twist at the beginning of the final act took me out of the story, not to mention this plan produced a lot more collateral damage than it should have.
Robinson does get some first rate performances from a largely unknown cast, with standout work from Camila Mendes as Drea, Austin Abrams as the smarmy Max, and especially Maya Hawke as the complex Eleanor. There's also an impressive unbilled turn from Sarah Michelle Gellar as the school's headmaster. It's a little longer than it needed to be and the climactic plot twist doesn't really work, but there is some entertainment value here.