Barely Lethal (2015)

Simply A Masterpiece

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I was pretty excited for this movie when I heard it was coming out soon and watched the trailer. But it seems all the funny and good parts were put in the trailer. So, the movie wasn't "all that" for me. Had a lot of great actors and actresses like Jessica alba and Samuel Jackson.

First off, don't think that the header for this review is a slam. In fact this movie goes out of the way to embrace tropes. It tells you straight up it's gonna go for the bad-ass action and angst filled tropes with GUSTO!It takes all the awkwardness of high school, and all the insanity of action, mixes them and turns them on their head. First off the "ugly duckling" gets twisted a LOT. "Megan" is an orphan raised in Samuel L. Jackson's school where A is for Ammo, B is for Bazooka, and C is for Chainsaw. Our heroine can't help but exam Teen Life through that training, and the lenses of teen movies/books. And makes mistakes because she just doesn't get normal life. Overall, at least for me, a fresh take on yet another teen movie. Oh, and if Sansa had been based on Sophie Turner in this movie, Ramsey would have been fed to the dogs straight up.

The only reason I can think of for all the bad reviews and horrid IMDb rating, is that people went into the film expecting originality, but instead got a cliché movie, but a cliché is only a cliché if it's not used as a cliché.Many times reviewers will condescend harsh critics by saying they didn't understand the movie, and therefor that's the reason they must not have liked it. Don't know about you but I hate to be the recipient of said condescension. However in this case, I think I need to be a hypocrite because I genuinely think many missed the point. This movie was actually brilliant in its own right. Every cliché, every predictable outcome, every ridiculous encounter was all intentionally scripted to be as such, and for that reason it actually made it not just bearable but entertaining to watch. Hailee Steinfeld's character (Megan) is the walking encyclopedia of teen pop culture and she wants to experience every second of it. As expected that experience comes with hard aches and coming of age realities. The fact that each character makes it blatantly obvious of their cliché role in this cliché movie, is somehow anti-cliché, and therefore an extremely fun and well acted family feel-good movie. It's not going to be for everyone, but if you can appreciate a fun perspective on the teen culture genre, you'll enjoy this for what it is. It's not an 8 out of 10 movie, but in its own way and in its respective corner of entertainment, an 8 is well deserved. It's the cliché that isn't a cliché.

This is in part a farcical takeoff on the kind of teen movie that pits a good, wholesome girl perhaps from the wrong side of the tracks against a clique of socially snobby girls. I have in mind films such as Mean Girls (2004), Pretty in Pink (1986) and Cruel Intentions (1999). Here the premise (she's an orphan trained since childhood to be an international assassin) is more than a bit ridiculous but has the virtue of serving up a heroine as fashionable as TV's Super Girl and Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen.Hailee Steinfeld plays the awkward girl trying to have a normal high school life as an exchange student. She's sweet, honorable, emotionally vulnerable and has little idea about how a teenaged American girl should act. However, thanks to her training she is tougher than the biggest dude on campus, which might come in handy.I only want to say one more thing about this surprisingly fun movie: you know the formula: the good girl overcomes the mean girls, rejects the bad boy, and finds the perfect boyfriend (who is not all that popular but is also good and true) and lives happily ever after while the audience lives vicariously in triumph over their own high school demons. Or not. See this pleasant diversion and find out.--Dennis Littrell, author of "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote"