The trailers for “The DUFF” have sold the film as yet another
in the line of “Pygmalion”-inspired teen makeover comedies — a “She’s All That”
for the new millennium. You know the type: one of those feeble stories where
the audience is meant to believe that a beautiful young actress is a hideous
troll until she takes off her glasses and lets her hair down. That device has
never been much more than a stale clichรฉ, so I wasn’t expecting much from any
film that even attempted to play it off as anything else. But now having seen “The
DUFF,” it’s fair to say that its ad campaign doesn’t do justice to what’s
actually a rather sharp little comedy.
I honestly can’t decide if the marketing is a case of trying
to force a surprisingly clever movie into a more conveniently established mold,
or simply a bit of cannily deceptive marketing meant to upend expectations for
a film that’s significantly smarter than its advertising suggests.
The success of “The DUFF” hinges largely on an immensely
appealing cast led by Mae Whitman (“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”) and Robbie
Amell (“The Flash” TV series). Whitman plays Bianca, a goofy, tomboyish horror
movie geek. Amell is Wesley, Bianca’s childhood friend, turned callous
acquaintance after football proved to be his in with the popular crowd. The
inciting incident occurs during a party, when he off-handedly refers to her as
the DUFF (designated ugly, fat friend) amongst her clique. The word is a
shorthand way of referring to the more approachable member amongst a group of
friends; the one who acts as a gatekeeper that interested parties must get past
in order to gain access to the DUFF’s more desirable companions. The film goes
to great pains to explain that DUFF is a catch-all term, not to be taken
literally, thus sparing us from having to accept the idea that the lovely Ms.
Whitman is in any way fat or ugly.
Bianca is understandably incensed at this description. But in
the days that follow, she lets the incident get under her skin until she’s
built up a resentment toward her best friends (Skyler Samuels and Bianca A.
Santos), whom she believes responsible for relegating her to that role.
Conveniently, Wesley’s grades have resulted in him being benched from the
football team, leading to a mutually beneficial deal: She’ll help him pass
chemistry if he’ll help her overcome her DUFF designation.
There is no makeover in “The DUFF.”
In fact, I’m happy to report that no one really changes at all over the course
of the film. The deal is a means to examine the ways in which labels are
ultimately meaningless except as an excellent way to make us feel badly about
ourselves; learning that she’s a DUFF only changes the lens through which Bianca
views herself.
The witty script by Josh A. Cagan, adapting the book by Kody
Keplinger, still operates completely within the confines of established teen
comedy conventions. Naturally there’s the school’s resident mean girl, Madison
(Bella Thorne, who comes across like a mini Jessica Chastain), who exploits
Bianca’s insecurities seemingly just because she can. And of course, there’s
never a question about where the film has to end up, even if the path it takes
in getting there takes a few surprising zigs and zags — Cagan finds a
surprising amount of wiggle room within the clichรฉs.
The advice Wesley gives Bianca isn’t necessarily bad advice,
less about changing her appearance (aside from encouraging her to find a bra
that fits her properly) and more about gaining confidence in the person that
she already is. Even the requisite scene in which a mortifying video is leaked
to the entire student body is solved with an admirably straightforward reminder
that a little bit of embarrassment isn’t the end of the world, even if it feels
that way at the time.
By smartly sidestepping the genre’s more brainless aspects, “The
DUFF” joins the ranks of “Easy A” and “G.B.F.” — (relatively) recent high
school comedies that are smarter than they have any reason to be. It doesn’t
quite reach the all-time classic status of “Mean Girls” (even if it shares that
film’s tendency toward didactic speechifying to spell out its themes), but it
shows that, even within the constrictive boundaries of teen comedy, there’s
still plenty of room to surprise.
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2015.
