When “Damsels in Distress” begins, it is hard to ignore its “Mean Girls” leanings. After all they have quite a bit in common. A new girl arrives at school (Analeigh Tipton) where she is quickly taken under the wing of a female clique (Greta Gerwig, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Carrie MacLemore), which is headed by an intimidating blonde leader, Gerwig’s Violet. Slightly naΓ―ve and clearly out of place, Lily (Tipton) needs help navigating the world of a liberal arts college inhabited by the dimmest students imaginable. The only academic field apparently necessary to be accepted is writing your name on the application. However, throughout the course of the movie there are characters that emerge who seem incapable of even accomplishing that small feat. Not stupid and strikingly so, Violet is a rambling expression of big ideas, values and philosophies. Effusive and passionate, she quickly becomes the heart of the story as her idealism is shaken by betrayal.
It’s easy to empathize with Violet. Her effervescent
optimism is infectious and Greta Gerwig brings her bubbling to life with a
magnetism that grounds her zaniness into a relatable force. Violet’s embraced
her strangeness to a degree that she’s forgotten that she was ever that
peculiar to begin with, banishing the scars of a ridiculed past. What remains
is a plucky co-ed struggling to marry the refinement of the past with the lost
gentility of the present. That she has two followers/friends is a bit of movie
magic, given the real world would often stomp out someone as unique and
outspoken. However in the world of “Damsels”, she has managed to thrive as an
oddball who though embraced by some, goes mostly underappreciated by her peers,
who struggle to see how much of a pretty amazing person she really is.
Seeming to have pranced right out of a Woody Allen movie,
Violet is the best part of a rather out-of-this-world flick. “Damsels” could’ve
just as easily been titled “The Hipster Guidebook to Life: Everything You Need
to Know about Feeling Superior, Dressing Cool and Pretending to Comprehend the
Ironic”. Walt Whitman’s script is a biting indictment that hits on a few truths
but gets scatterbrained with an interlude as a musical and a pace that crawls
after the first 20 minutes into something incredibly baffling. It also has a
way of talking down to its audience, attempting to zip dialogue by so quickly
that you feel too exasperated to even try making sense of it.
As a satire on the current state of dating from the female
perspective, it is sadly accurate. Men in “Damsels” don’t get a positive
representation which is clearly a purposeful work of exaggeration meant to make
a point. In this isolated sample of college life gone awry young men who are
dumb, unfaithful, pervasive and pathologically deceptive, rule the day.
Whitman’s screenplay is correct in saying that it’s ultimately up to women to
hold the standard and refuse to lower themselves to anything below where they
have it set at. The exaggeration of male-dom is a drawback to the movie. While clearly there to make a
statement, it borders disastrously close to crossing the line into being full blown offensive as it’s getting there.
Opening with a bit of madcap nuance, Whitman veers the film
into a wacky overdrive that is delirious in nature. There are dance and singing
sequences meant to conjure the spirit of Fred Astaire and in doing so it loses
its real world sensibility. It is one thing to have a sing-a-long dance
sequence a la “(500) Days of Summer” that flows in with some hyper reality and
then fades away. It’s a completely different animal to have it start to overshadow
every facet of the movie. Due to this sidetracking, the first quarter of the
film is completely disconnected from the rest and at close to an hour and 40
minutes, it feels much longer.
By the time subplots involving Lily’s romance with her
friend turned more-than-friend Xavier (Hugo Becker), Heather’s (a charming Carrie
Maclemore) courtship of the dumb as a box of hair Thor (Billy Magnussen) and
Violet’s ensuing fixation on creating the next dance craze, the movie has worn
out most of its goodwill. Gerwig keeps the fires burning that the ship that
appeared so promising from a distance can maintain its allure throughout and
though it doesn’t deliver, she rescues “Damsels” from total destruction. Rating: 5.5/10
This movie was reviewed in conjunction with the War Horse
vs. War Machine podcast episode. Here’s the full description via War Horse vs.War Machine and click here to listen: