Do Revenge
Half-Mean Girls, half-Strangers on a Train, all loving homage to as many
teen comedies as you can think of, with a pair of passable lead performances (Maya
Hawke did not do much, but Camilla Mendes amped up her soap tendencies from Riverdale to
delightful effect) and a script that (to my rapidly aging ears, at least) nailed
the transformation both of dialect and dynamic over the past ten years: the villain
is not a turbo-jock but "fake-woke", and the quips were delivered with a solid
level of panache.
The twist (which Haley and I guessed, but I don't think it's a film that was meant to
leave you agog) was fun: there is no better trope in film than the "here's a replay of
seven different scenes with a different implication and tempo now that you know The Twist",
after all.
The final act was — a bit messy, a bit rushed. The script really leans into the deep sociopathy
of the two leads, and then abruptly leans out of it in a way that defies logic even more
than the preceeding convolutions. (I also thought the more earnest ending — the leads ending up
as friends, sans their romantic entanglements — was betrayed by the mid-credits romantic sparks
reigniting in both couples, but alas!)
(Also, Sophie Turner in a bit role yelling about coke — comedic gold! Was not expecting that.)