Do Revenge, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s new Netflix comedy co-written with Celeste Ballard, stars Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes in a mish-mashed satire of iconic 90s teen movies like Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s All That, Cruel Intentions, Heathers — you get it. The greatest hits, basically. Throughout the movie, there are visual and verbal nods to all of these, nostalgia and more modern touches colliding against a brightly colored Miami prep school backdrop for a kaleidoscopic effect. The needledrops whiplash between throwback hits from Hole to newer fare like Olivia Rodrigo. For the most part, Do Revenge’s collagework provides a fun, sometimes deliciously unsettling, anachronistic and immersive world. But the film neglects to crib what turns out to be a very crucial detail from all those greatest hits: the runtime.
Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Cruel Intentions all have the exact same runtime: one hour and thirty-seven minutes. The other films referenced in Do Revenge aren’t much longer than that. But Do Revenge is an hour and fifty-eight minutes, and those extra twenty minutes end up seeming significant, the film really lagging in its final act in a way that ultimately works against its otherwise very captivating mid-movie twist.
In a Strangers On A Train flourish, Do Revenge hinges on two teen girls who are strangers to each other enacting each other’s revenge. Mendes’ Drea recently had her video sexts leaked by her boyfriend Max (Austin Abrams). Hawke’s Eleanor, a transfer student to Drea’s posh Miami prep school, wants to punish the girl who bullied her at summer camp when she was 13. According to Eleanor, said bully spread a rumor that she was a predatory lesbian. Eleanor’s queer, but she’s not a creep, and she wants to bring down the girl who upended her reputation. Eleanor and Drea hatch a plan to bring down each other’s enemies, becoming friends and then something more complicated than friends along the way.
When Eleanor arrives on campus, her eventual love interest Gabbi (Talia Ryder) gives her a tour of the cliques, one of several direct homages to the oeuvre of teen movies the film reveres and pokes fun at. At times, that simultaneous mockery and emulation of these tropes and devices really works. There’s significant appreciation for the deranged artform of these movies that often eschewed logic in favor of over-the-top entertainment. Merely making fun of these films wouldn’t be fun or even all that interesting. They were ridiculous, and Do Revenge recreates that ridiculousness.
Drea, for example, is the resident “poor” kid, a scholarship student whose mother — who we never meet, because of course parents are always absent in these kinds of films — is a nurse working night shifts. Drea works at the tennis camp instead of attending it (gasp!!!!). But she also wears head-to-toe high-fashion fits, purchased from thrift stores second-hand, as if that would make the clothes any semblance of affordable for a supposedly poor kid. But that lack of realism on the verge of surrealism throughout Do Revenge is, again, a spot-on evocation of these 90s movies that have stood the test of time not for being accurate depictions of high school life but for holding up a fun-house mirror to high school life.
There’s a self-awareness to the way Do Revenge approaches this, and it tips into satire with some of its self-referential moments, like when one character wonders why the hell she did an outfit change immediately after hitting someone with her car. Sarah Michelle Gellar delivers a movie-stealing cameo as the prep school’s hot, mean principal and seems very aware of exactly the kind of movie she’s in. My personal favorite moment from the film is this runner of Eleanor and Drea saying what they wish SMG’s character would do to them:
Eleanor: I want her to hit me with her Tesla and then reverse back over me.
Drea: I want her to stuff me like a taxidermy doll and then mount me on her wall like a prize.
Eleanor: I want her to hide my body in the woods and then start the search party trying to find me.
Mendes and Hawke are indeed having fun with these roles, Mendes well seasoned in the art of making boldly drawn characters and absurd plotting still feel emotionally resonant and real-ish thanks to experience from many seasons of Riverdale. Hawke might just narrowly edge her out as the Do Revenge MVP though, that mid-movie twist hinging on Eleanor and allowing Hawke to give a performance to remember. I won’t say too much about it, because damn I really did love this twist, but it works even if you do see it coming. Eleanor is an instant queer chaos icon, and Do Revenge is delightfully twisted, bitey and mordant under all the brightly colored, patterned fashion worn by its characters.
Do Revenge does largely avoid seeming like just a cobbled-together collage of montages. It has its own specific visual world and invents its own chaos, Eleanor and Drea’s partnership strange and sinister. It’s not just recreating scenes of the past, instead putting its own spins on them — for the most part. Some, like the 10 Things I Hate About You paint scene, play a little too close to the original and end up feeling like nostalgic filler-fluff. And sometimes, Do Revenge gets lost in its own chaos. I found myself sometimes longing for a more established point of view for the film, a stronger commitment to the absurdity of it all. It feels weird to wish a ridiculous movie were more ridiculous, but Do Revenge is indeed at its finest when it makes the least sense.
And truly, it is too long! Kaytin Robinson, by the way, also wrote and directed Someone Great, which I also had some pacing issues with. Just a tad fewer nostalgic montages and a few more inventions of its own could have perhaps propelled Do Revenge into more lasting territory, but I don’t think it’s going to come close to having the same rewatchability factor as its predecessors. Its soundtrack may be no-skips, but there are some scenes that drag out way too long or could have been cut altogether. The movie offers a terrific playground for Mendes and Hawke to mess around in as these gleefully flawed, cartoonish and yet ultimately dimensional characters. And this feels like the kind of high-style, low-stakes satirical high school comedy that simply doesn’t get made anymore, but you know what else Hollywood seems to have forgotten about that needs to come back? The 90ish-minute movie runtime.
the whole plot can basically be narrowed down to “i support women’s rights but more importantly, i support women’s wrongs”.
you’re right about the pacing issues but i still really enjoyed it. also sophie turner’s cameo was *chef’s kiss*
Can we talk about Talia Ryder’s Gabbi though?!? If you’re going to make the movie too long AT LEAST make it too long with more of her absolutely perfect scenes. Truly impeccable.
Agree with you on the pacing issues, there were definitely some scenes that could’ve been cut or shortened. I also found it somewhat unbelievable that Drea didn’t remember [no spoilers]. I mean how can you not remember something like that??
I still enjoyed it though. I love that characters in teen movies/TV shows now can just *be queer* and it’s not a plot point. I know that still isn’t the reality for too many kids in real life, but seeing it normalized in media geared to teens makes this jaded old lesbian happy.
Regarding Drea forgetting, I felt like the film was building to a point about the longevity of the kind of reputational damage the characters are trying to inflict. Yes, it seems big in the moment, but really it’s only going to be a big deal for six months of high school. But it didn’t go anywhere.
I was a really mean kid and I don’t remember most of the stuff I did. Apparently I was even mean to people I liked. I was just an a-hole to everyone.
Her not remembering is the kind of thing I’d 100% believe IRL but when used in a movie feels too convenient. There’s something interesting in the idea, though — how we remember ourselves and our actions the way we want to remember them, blocking out past moments that don’t fit with how we see ourselves now. Drea thinks of herself as a good person but she’s an unreliable narrator. Still, you’d think her memory would have been jogged by the details lol
One quick edit – I’m pretty sure Drea’s mom is a nurse, as they use her working nights as a reason she’s largely absent for the film!
you’re right! updated
I’m so shocked to see so many praising Maya’s performance in this! She was fine, but Cami stole the show for me. She has that intangible, untouchable star quality.
I’m inclined to agree with you: I love Maya but Cami ate this role up!
however, Sophie Turner and her three perfect, unhinged minutes of screen time was the highlight for me
interesting! i’m a big Cami fan, especially on Riverdale, and I thought she was great in this, but Maya gave such a strange, unsettling performance that really worked for me
I agree! And I’m surprised, because I’ve never been a big fan of her performance in Riverdale (perhaps that speaks more to the writing in Riverdale, though). She was captivating in this
can we get some commotion for Oscar Winner Olivia Colman the emotional support bearded dragon
Definitely the MVP!
V IMPORTANT CHARACTER
I completely agree about the 90 minute movie needing a comeback, I’m so tired of them getting longer and longer!! Gimme something I can start watching at 9 and be in bed by 11 please, I’m a tired queer who needs her sleep
Great take, my question before watching a film is always how long is it and if it’s 1h30 that is the golden length, I’m watching it baby! Over 3 hours? Even if I love the premise you couldn’t make me
I loved the film, it’s visually stunning and funny but agree it’s not quite iconic. I hope they we get some more films in the genre to get there!
Also feel like the palette & rose crest at the school, as well as the scene where they were facing opposite directions in bed (iconic crescent bed reference) might be giving some Utena vibes??
Just watched the film and loved it! I agree it’s not quite up to the standards of past iconic teen comedies of its ilk, but imo it’s the best one released in over a decade. I loved that they were able to make it so appealing to a millennial audience whilst still feeling rooted in the realities of Gen Z culture – I’m sure it’s not an easy feat to make a teen film that will resonate with both generations.
One thing – I’m surprised you only mention it referencing/being inspired by 90s movies. It is, of course, but I felt like the clearest influence was actually Mean Girls!
Thanks for some good takes here — something I would like to bring up, though, is that this movie perpetuates incredibly harmful anti-Semitic tropes in Max’ character that makes the movie honestly un-recommendable for me.
We don’t see Max’ Star of David until one of the final scenes, when it’s placed into full view of the camera — it was at that point in which his entire character clicked into place for me, functioning exactly as it seems to be designed. This is also the scene in which Max (very unnecessarily) uses Yiddish and is literally described as evil, then (spoiler) once he’s publicly humiliated goes on to tell Tara that her dad won’t be able to win a political election without his support. Many other parts of the film emphasize Max’ extreme wealth. Why was it necessary to have his character wear a Star of David?
Eleanor’s character, especially as “Nosy Nora,” also brought up some questions for me of anti-Semitic tropes — Eleanor’s character being an infiltrator and having a lizard as a pet, hiding her name and her nose (both coded as Jewish) — this character being a slightly less obvious trope but raising questions for me as well.
I did a little bit of research on Strangers on a Train, the book/movie plot that Do Revenge is based on, written by Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith was an outspoken racist and anti-Semite who used the phrase “semicaust” — I’ll spare the explanation here but dropping a link at the bottom of this comment for more info. Anyways, why did this movie have to be made? Who approved these tropes?
I’ve read some other reviews online that say a few similar things, but I wanted to bring this dialogue into this space since I always turn to Autostraddle for the critical reads. In my opinion, we should not be talking about this movie without breaking down these tropes and talking about their harmful historical and contemporary significance.
Would love to see some more (anti-Zionist) takes from Autostraddle on this. Thanks!s
Whoops, here’s the link for more on Patricia Highsmith
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/highsmith-was-a-troll-on-richard-bradfords-devils-lusts-and-strange-desires/