Moxie (2021)
Directed by Amy Poehler
Inspired by her mom's rebellious past and a confident new friend, a shy 16-year-old publishes an anonymous zine calling out sexism at her school.
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8 films that influenced Moxie
What critics say influenced Moxie
It’s a promising concept, somewhere between Pump Up The Volume and Gossip Girl , with Olivia Wilde’s similarly right-on teen comedy Booksmart supplying a recent comparison point.
Her 2019 debut, Wine Country , deserved to make a bigger splash, and with her sophomore effort, Moxie , she’s made a teen comedy that, like the recent Booksmart and Eighth Grade , reinvigorates a genre that had long seemed stale.
(This is coming from someone who found Booksmart pretty hilarious, so adjust your expectations accordingly.)
There is a phony, learn-a-lesson vibe (we used to call them "afterschool specials") to Moxie that you won't find in far superior recent work like Eighth Grade , Booksmart , or Love, Simon .
Her 2019 debut, Wine Country , deserved to make a bigger splash, and with her sophomore effort, Moxie , she’s made a teen comedy that, like the recent Booksmart and Eighth Grade , reinvigorates a genre that had long seemed stale.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Moxie gives off some Election , Booksmart , Lady Bird , Love, Simon and The Edge of Seventeen vibes, although it never quite rises to their level of insight and comedy.
There is a phony, learn-a-lesson vibe (we used to call them "afterschool specials") to Moxie that you won't find in far superior recent work like Eighth Grade , Booksmart , or Love, Simon .
It’s a promising concept, somewhere between Pump Up The Volume and Gossip Girl , with Olivia Wilde’s similarly right-on teen comedy Booksmart supplying a recent comparison point.
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Topping the list are the weak portrayals of the story’s few adults, most notably Rockford High’s Principal Shelly (a misused Marcia Gay Harden), who is so clueless and absurdly dismissive she makes Eve Arden’s Principal McGee from “Grease” look like Gloria Steinem.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Moxie gives off some Election , Booksmart , Lady Bird , Love, Simon and The Edge of Seventeen vibes, although it never quite rises to their level of insight and comedy.
As the Moxie acolytes grow, they become increasingly underwritten; in a second-act Moxie meeting, a trio of new faces never receive names or backstories (a joke lovingly parodied in the “Pitch Perfect” series, and still somehow pervasive, even in the most well-meaning of films).
“Moxie” follow in the footsteps of the vivacious “Booksmart,” the sex-positive “Blockers” and even refreshingly femsplain-y “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” as a Gen-Z-centric movie with progressive ideals around race, gender and identity.