Drawing on young eyes using bright colors, ‘Do Revenge’ is more than just a teen drama flick. PHOTO CREDIT: Variety.com
Starring Camilla Mendes, Maya Hawke and several other young up-and-coming actors, “Do Revenge” may portray itself as a typical teen drama flick, but don’t let the tabloids fool you.
Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the film presents itself with the standard methods to catch a young eyed audience. Graphic, colorful clothing, a cast with lavish lifestyles and an edgy 80s soundtrack to engage a sense of cultural enlightenment.
We open onto protagonist Drea (Mendes), who seems to be living the dream. She’s on scholarship at a wealthy private school, on track to get into Yale with a wonderful group of friends and boyfriend that adore her. Or so she thinks.
When a compromising video of Drea is leaked by her boyfriend, her reputation and sanity go down the drain of the marble fountains she is surrounded by at Rose Hill Country Day.
Drea isn’t going to sit down and cry about it, though. There is no shining prince that comes to save her. Instead, she meets Eleanor (Hawke), a transfer student who is practically the opposite of hyper-feminine Drea. What brings them together? Their spunky, dangerous thirst for revenge.
Eleanor has been outed and bullied in the past, while Drea has been publicly exploited. Neither of them can touch their personal tormentors, so they enlist the help of each other.
The duo decide that Eleanor will go after Drea’s boyfriend and Drea will go after the girl who outed Eleanor. As the plot unfolds, it also unravels.
This movie plays on the common tropes of a teen drama. A makeover scene, giant house parties and an unrealistic amount of time spent lounging around all makes their appearance on-screen. “Do Revenge” is self aware, though, and uses these cliches to strengthen the film, making the twists even more surprising.
Revenge on a teenage scale in film tends to derive inspiration from the infamous “Mean Girls,” with characters backing others into corners and destroying cliques follower by follower.
Is the latter in “Do Revenge?” Yes, but the idea is taken to a higher extreme, including anonymous dosing of magic mushrooms and getting some students arrested.
The cliche that weakens the film most is dialogue. A trend in teenage-centric movies tends to be an unrealistic use of slang and almost “bouncy” phrases used by characters. Instead of creating a more relatable script for teens, it produces evidence that the film was not written by a modern day teenager. This doesn’t majorly take away from the plot though. It simply may elicit a few eyerolls from an actual teenage viewer.
The plot of “Do Revenge” throws a major curve. However, much of the film is spent on buildup, and by the time the plot twist is revealed, there is very little time to let it resolve properly.
Thus, the ending of the film is a bit unrealistic, and seems to use some deus ex machina, in which an ending is wrapped up too swiftly and unrealistically in order to create a more concise ending. Character development is there, but it happens at erratic times and paces.
The general ensemble and cast is also very quick to believe certain points of the plot and story without question. Although the plot is engaging, it is lacking in complete finality and important structural story components.
Mendes delivers a believable, inhabited progtanist, and while Hawke is amusing, this movie reimburses the exemplification of her being typecast. She consistently plays the lesbian side character who has a “I don’t care about what people think” attitude, until it is revealed that she secretly does. This brings into question Hawke’s skillset as an actor, and whether or not nepotism plays a role in the fame she’s receiving.
“Do Revenge” was enjoyable to watch, and definitely defies expectations. One goes into it expecting a typical teen drama/romance and comes out with something far more complicated and messy. Parts of the actual writing are legitimately messy, but the film is not necessarily badly written. The general plot and ideas of the film are engaging, as it pokes fun at the typical teen drama and is quite self aware. It can be an interesting story to mull over, but will eventually become just another movie in the “already watched” section of your Netflix.