I went into the movie theater with the best expectations, but
walked out sorely disappointed. You Again
couldn't find its central message, choosing to rely on recycled jokes and
stereotypes.
It started when You Again
portrayed the typical, and exaggerated, image of high school. Marni (Kristen
Bell), a senior in 2002, is fashioned with braces, pimples and huge glasses. I
found this picture funny, but groaned when the "popular" girls picked Marni up,
dropped her outside the school, and locked the doors. Although I'm personally
ready to adopt a more realistic idea of high school, I was willing to overlook
this at first.
But scene upon scene was done in the same vain. They were
over-the-top. More or less, You Again
was a mixing of many movie situations that have been created before, i.e. a
brother and sister are close, but somehow the sister never gets a chance to
talk to her brother about something important. Likewise, the falling down,
drink spilling, slapstick comedy got old.
I never understood where the film was going. At one point, it
took a serious tone and discussed the effects of bullying. Then, immediately,
it went back to cat fights, dumping food on one another and pushing people into
a pool. The entertainment wasn't there and the attitude was confusing.
The real problem was, there wasn't a single female character
that I rooted for or sympathized with. You
Again made all of the women crazy. Comparatively, the men were the "voice
of reason". If there's one thing that doesn't belong in movies anymore, it's
the idea that women are silly and men are right.
It wasn't that the acting was terrible or that every joke
failed. I think the cast suited their roles well. Sigourney Weaver and Jamie
Lee Curtis brought some energy to the film. But once I started disliking the
film, it was hard to overlook even the tiniest mistakes.
You Again had a
premise that I'm sure people could relate to. Unfortunately, it did a poor job
of getting that message across. The film went all over the place, and left me
resentful instead of fulfilled.
