Robinson’s spy spoof misses the mark.
Spawned from a short film that was worth the wait in download time, writer-director Angela Robinson’s directorial debut is a girly action flick which aims high in the campiness department, but instead of upping the social satire ante with a pertinent homosexual discourse, this comes across like a typical Disney teenage fantasy feature – minus, of course the rough language and the muff lesbian romance. While the plaid skirts remain high, expectations going into this film should be low – very low.
Spun with a bubble-gum discourse where big guns replace strap-ons, D.E.B.S. is a mix between Clueless and Charlie’s Angels. This coming out party wrapped inside a battle of good versus and evil format sees a yummy blond-haired, blue-eyed perky leader of a four-person crime-fighting unit named Amy (Sara Foster – The Big Bounce) take on the vixen of all villains with lipstick lesbian Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster – Fast and the Furious. Not unsurprisingly, the film combines the protagonist’s battle with the enemy within with a battle against her actual enemy/thesis paper.
Weighing heavily on the ever-going prelude to the kiss episode that is about as unsatisfying as Britney’s Madonna kiss, this modestly budget flick could have done a lot more than the tamely inserted exaggerated plastic props, course language and lesbian innuendos. Heavy on the 80’s soundtrack, it quickly becomes apparent that many scenes have no use – gags are ineffective and all the wit gets replaced by empty spaces.
D.E.B.S. might be a colorful tool for school nurses to use in pre-teen discussions about being gay, but being the skin rash that it is says that some misjudgment was made when the film was at the green-lit stage. Ultimately, the film is tone-deficient and Robinson has difficulty stretching out her nifty short film into a feature film format. Instead of giving us a fresh, spunky low-budget satire we have another item to add to the waste-basket full of unimportant movies in the teen comedy genre.
