Movie Review

Amy Poehler's Moxie empowers teen girls in fight against toxic masculinity

For way too long, the stories of boys and men have been prioritized in Hollywood and beyond. In fact, it’s only been in the last few years, that films like Blockers, Booksmart, and Yes, God, Yes, which offer a young female perspective on screen and female leadership behind the scenes, have finally started to come to the forefront.

The latest in that lineage is Moxie, which comes off as a combination between the light airiness of a teen comedy and the righteous indignation of Promising Young Woman. Moxie is not a person but rather an idea thought up by Vivian (Hadley Robinson), a brainy-but-shy high schooler who rarely oversteps her bounds. But the arrival of new student Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Peña), who’s unafraid to stand up for herself, and a series of small-to-large inciting events awaken a new side of Vivian.

Soon she’s digging into the protest history of her mom (Amy Poehler) to create an anonymous zine she dubs Moxie to call out the rampant toxic masculinity and culture that supports it at her school. Slowly but surely, Moxie builds a loyal following, with supporters protesting in a variety of increasingly bold ways.

Directed by Poehler and adapted by Tamara Chestna and Dylan Meyer from the novel by Houston English teacher Jennifer Mathieu, the film is different from most teen movies in that it offers a broad range of viewpoints and tries to flesh out its main characters. Vivian’s best friend Claudia (Lauren Tsai), is Chinese, and the initial Moxie group features mostly Black and Latino girls. Without being condescending to them, the film gives these characters the opportunity to comment and expand upon Vivian’s message.

While the film is mostly light in tone, it doesn’t back away from the seriousness of the topics that arise as part of the story. Underneath the fun of seeing these girls taking charge and trying to right the wrongs of their school lies genuine hurt that’s too often experienced by women in the real world. The filmmakers take care to illuminate various injustices and crimes without coming off as wishy-washy or preachy.

The combination of feminism and romance has been antithetical in some other films, but Poehler and her team make it work through Vivian’s crush on Seth (Nico Hiraga). True, Seth is the hunky ideal of a feminist ally, but his support allows Vivian to become even more confident in her new outlook. Their bond also belies the concept that any woman who’s interested in advancing the cause for females is a man-hater.

Robinson, previously best known for playing creepy twins in the Amazon series Utopia, does a great job at making Vivian come out of her shell in a believable way. She’s matched by Pascual-Peña, who’s magnetic every time she comes on screen. While the film belongs to the younger up-and-coming actors, the presence of well-known people like Poehler, Marcia Gay Harden, Ike Barinholtz, and Clark Gregg help the film navigate through some of its sticky points.

Moxie is a blast of pure energy that proves that stories centered on and made by women need to continue being highlighted. The fact that it can deliver its serious point in a highly entertaining way makes the case that audiences need more movies like it, and the sooner the better.

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Moxie is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.

Hadley Robinson in Moxie.

Hadley Robinson in Moxie

Photo courtesy of Netflix

Hadley Robinson in Moxie.

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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