Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
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With near Clueless -aesthetic and the mean streak of Cruel Intentions (with a special cameo that makes this feel like a spiritual sequel), Do Revenge feels like it’s trying to capture the pastel-soaked past and by the third act, it works.
Instead, the biting new comedy starring Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke is more closely a spiritual successor to high school movie classics like Heathers or Clueless .
As a young child and teenager, I was able to watch classics like The Breakfast Club (1985), Heathers (1988), Clueless (1995), and my personal favorite: 2004’s Mean Girls .
The 1995 Alicia Silvertone’s Clueless vision is brought in as well for Hawke’s makeover montage of the new socially awkward girl undertaken by the former social queen.
“Heathers”, “Jawbreaker”, & “Cruel Intentions” seem to set the tone for a tale that has the look and feel of “Clueless”.
Someone Great is best pitched as Bridesmaids meets 500 Days of Summer — it’s a female led comedy with heartbreak, self-worth and self-realization at its core.
That’s the difference between a stellar Bridesmaids and Girls Trip and meh copycats like Rough Night and Ibiza .
Someone Great borrows from the post- Bridesmaids canon of excellent, raunchy comedies driven by friendship between women.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: As adorable as Stanfield and Rodriguez are together, the real emotional core of the film is the friendship between Jenny, Blair and Erin, who are hilarious—so the titles that come to mind are Bridesmaids and Broad City .
If you’ll allow me to finally play the gender card, this is a disservice to female audiences who have been craving this kind of finely-crafted, debaucherous touchstone since “Bridesmaids” ignited this fire eight years ago.
The plot will likely remind you somewhat of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) but with a modern spin.
As noted in the plot synopsis for the film, Do Revenge is a glossy teenage update on Hitchcock’s “ Strangers On A Train ” while being inspired by the twisted high school tales of Hollywood past.
Do Revenge is an enjoyable new take on the premise from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train .
Instead, the biting new comedy starring Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke is more closely a spiritual successor to high school movie classics like Heathers or Clueless .
As a young child and teenager, I was able to watch classics like The Breakfast Club (1985), Heathers (1988), Clueless (1995), and my personal favorite: 2004’s Mean Girls .
You can also mark the clear similarities shared with movies like Heathers and Mean Girls .
“Heathers”, “Jawbreaker”, & “Cruel Intentions” seem to set the tone for a tale that has the look and feel of “Clueless”.
Think: Girls Trip , Bachelorette , or another Netflix release, Ibiza .
Hot on the heels of “Girls Trip” and “Rough Night” comes “Someone Great,” Netflix’s contribution to the “girls’ night out” genre.
Since then, female audiences haven’t had much to hang onto except for “Girls Trip” in 2017.
It’s a mix of all of those classic films, from Cruel Intentions to 10 Things I Hate About You.
It calls to mind the “Ain’t No Sunshine” sequence from Notting Hill , and captures Robinson’s ability to work within a genre while elevating and expanding it at the same time.
Someone Great is best pitched as Bridesmaids meets 500 Days of Summer — it’s a female led comedy with heartbreak, self-worth and self-realization at its core.
On the romance front, it 500 Days of Summer (a film I love), but the feminine energy version of that.
Someone Great is not quite as notable as the biggest films in Netflix’s 2018 romantic comedy renaissance—the lovers’ romp of Set It Up , or the horny fantasy of The Kissing Booth.
It’s not quite as charming or winning as recent originals To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before or Set It Up .
The film is both raunchy and emotional, and is backed by an outstanding cast in Gina Rodriguez (Jane The Virgin), Brittany Snow (Pitch Perfect, Hairspray), and Dewanda Wise (She’s Gotta Have It).
Writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson did TV’s “Sweet/Vicious” a few years back, and she and her players — Gina Rodriguez of “Jane the Virgin,” DeWanda Wise of Netflix’s “She’s Gotta Have It” and the reliably cute and funny Brittany Snow of the “Pitch Perfect” movies — hurl so much slang, so many topical references and use the drugs of the moment (weed and Molly), it’s as if they’ve stuffed a TV season’s worth of sassy/witty banter into a 90 minute movie.
Squad Goals: One pitfall of the emergent genre of movies and TV shows using rom-com tropes to tell stories about female friendship (think the Pitch Perfect franchise or Freeform’s The Bold Type , which shares a lot of DNA with Someone Great ) is that they’re sometimes a little too hesitant to move past simplistic “Yass bitch!” uplift into something more nuanced.
I’ve loved Snow since Pitch Perfect , and while her character here is not dissimilar from that one, she nails the quiet simmer of a “nice girl” who’s actually Fed Up.
But there’s plenty of loony chemistry to fill in the gaps, mostly emanating from its three headlining women: She’s Gotta Have It ’s Wise, fantastic as a dry-witted lesbian with pathological commitment issues; Pitch Perfect alum Snow, a type-A blonde who gets a lot more fun after two shots of tequila; and Rodriguez, the kind of endearingly flawed heroine you feel like you’d actually want to lay on the floor with on a hungover Sunday.
Someone Great is not quite as notable as the biggest films in Netflix’s 2018 romantic comedy renaissance—the lovers’ romp of Set It Up , or the horny fantasy of The Kissing Booth.
But like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, it’s smart and sweet for what it is—a subdued, relationship-heavy The Hangover .