by Tim Gordon
Inspired by her mom’s rebellious past and a confident new friend, a shy teenager publishes an anonymous zine calling out sexism at her school in the high-school drama, Moxie.
In 2004, Tina Fey wrote a comedy, Mean Girls, about a group of vindicative high school girls led by the manipulative and vindictive, Regina George and her clique, “The Plastics”. One of Fey’s closest friends, Amy Poehler revisits similar elements, returning to high school for an updated look at contemporary high school in the coming-of-age story, Moxie.
It’s the first day of school at upper-crust Rockport High and Vivian Carter (Hadley Robinson) is settling in for another uneventful year where she is prepared to sink back into invisibility and go on with her business. When a new student, Lucy Hernandez (Alycia Pascual-Peña) questions the status quo, her courage attracts Vivian, who immediately befriends her outspoken classmate. The more time, Vivian spends with Lucy, the more it becomes clear that there are plenty of women like herself that are marginalized, overlooked, and abused.
Taking a clue from her outgoing mother, she secretly begins writing a zine that encourages her female classmates to express their individuality. As the zine begins to catch fire, everyone wants to know who the author is. Instead of claiming ownership, Vivian stays in the shadows as her creation begins a movement at Rockport High. As her classmate mobilize and start a new club, called Moxie, Vivian begins to understand that there are consequences to her rebellious actions but is still not courageous enough to stand up and reveal the truth. But will the events around her creation force her hand?
In addition to so many young women who are finding their voice, we also learn that there is a toxic culture that has been developed over time that rewards bad behavior from some entitled students and a history of teachers and administrators simply turning their heads instead of disciplining those they know are fallible. Meanwhile, with a vacuum in leadership, Lucy has stepped up and began to organize the “rebel girls” leading to not just a fresh breath of activism air at the school but also the ire of the school administrators who try to quell their movement.
Poehler, pulling double duty in her follow-up film to her 2019 debut, Wine Country, also co-stars as a free-spirited mother whose actions serve as inspiration for her impressionable daughter. Pascual-Peña shines again as the spark of energy that led to the actions that liberate an entire class of female students. Fresh off of her work on the rebooted, Saved by the Bell, Pascual-Peña needs a comedy badly after two straight edgy performances. Robinson, despite the fact that she is top-billed, provides the story’s point-of-view but the screenplay doesn’t offer her much of an opportunity to truly stretch in the role. Sure, we see her transformation from a shy girl to an activist but the fact that her character toils in anonymity for so long before finally embracing her role as a leader may have played into her underwhelming performance.
Not as accomplished or memorable as Mean Girls, Poehler’s film is aspirational and a solid debut. To be fair, there is a glut of YA (Young Adult) stories being released that many simply are falling between the cracks and forgotten. Moxie feels like the next iteration of a Mean Girls story that continues to highlight the frustration that too many young women are faced with in high school. While the times may change, human interaction remains constant as young people try to navigate from the tender years of high school to adulthood. As this film illustrates, it takes a lot of “Moxie,” to make that transition to who you will become.
Grade: C+