The Bechdel Cast - She's All That with Anna Hossnieh

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

On this episode, Caitlin takes her glasses off and Jamie lets her hair down, and suddenly they are cool and popular enough to hang out with special guest Anna Hossnieh and talk about She's All That. ��(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @annahossnieh on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories,

and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism?

The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our podcast about women and movies. We talk about specifically how well or poorly women are portrayed and represented in movies. And wouldn't you know it, women are usually not portrayed very well. I don't understand. How could this be?

In this economy, in this society. In this amazing society and economy, how could this possibly be? So we use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for our larger conversation. The Bechdel test for us. The Bechdel test is invented by Alison Bechdel, a famous cartoonist, interpreted in a lot of different ways. Our interpretation of the Bechdel test currently, as it is always evolving, is that there has to be two female identifying characters in a movie that speak to each other about something other than a man. They have to have names and it has to be for exactly two lines of dialogue. How hard could it be?

It couldn't be hard because it's a very low bar. And yet it only recently started passing regularly. And even then, usually tenuously between waiters with name tags on. Oh, Stassia is her name. And she asked, do you like egg? Feminine. And then female identifying protagonist says, me like egg. Over easy, please.

Great example of a scene passing the Michael test. Do you like egg? Me like egg egg both have names yeah it passes indeed I'm so thrilled okay we recorded two episodes today just a little peek behind the scenes and we could not be doing two more different movies today I am so excited on this this movie is fully activated me on every single human level. It was possible to, it took me two days to watch this movie. I couldn't watch it in one sitting. Cause I was like,

it's so much. It's the cast alone. You're just like Lillard's here. Usher is here. Lil' Kim's here. Gabrielle Union's here. The stars are out, but like the B stars are out.

No A star is out for this movie, I would argue, at all. The biggest star is Paul Walker, Rest in Power. That's literally it. This is like 90s, early 2000s B stars to the max. I'm so excited for today. So to help us discuss this wonderful movie, we have a guest as we always do. Thank you so much. In advance, thank you so much.

Thanks for bringing us this movie. She is a producer at How Stuff Works and she's one half of the podcast Ethnically Ambiguous, Anna Hosnier. Hello. What's up? Thank you for being here. I just want to say this growing up this was one of my favorite movies oh and yes r.i.p paul walker oh my god paul walker is such a wild character in this movie he takes you think originally like oh he's not gonna come back but he keeps coming back

with increasing importance so you brought us she's all that yes when you were like granted me my wish of being on this show i was like we will talk about she's all that it's the perfect bechdel cast movie i would argue it delivers on every problematic level it's a masterpiece of crap like it's like somehow a Marvel in the worst possible... It's part of the Marvel extended. Well, that's the best thing. It's so fast moving. It just goes, goes, goes. Every scene you're like, what? Why?

And then they also... I learned a lot of lingo from this movie. Oh, yeah. Growing up, like, wigging. Like, why are you wigging? And like, hoover it. Hoover it. Hoover it. There are a few references that I was like, is this too smart for this movie? Or am I stupid hoover it there are a few references that i was like is this too smart for this movie or am i stupid like there are there are some high level and when when caitlin and i watched this within 24 hours of each other i watched it a little bit after her like literally like 12 hours

after she did it took us forever to watch it because we had to keep pausing to be like wow there was a weird amount to unpack in that single scene with Freddie Prinze Jr. Yeah, it took me like three hours to watch or more. And it's only an hour and a half movie. Like I had to keep. It's an hour 35. It's a tight, it's perfect. Perfect length.

Couldn't, I mean, this movie is weirdly perfect for everything that's wrong with it. Well, yeah, I almost wasn't going to watch it again. Because I was like, you know, every goddamn scene in this movie. And then I was like, nope, got to watch it again. I need my like 10 pages of notes. And then every scene I was like, oh, so good. Just so nostalgic of it. And like I watched it like two in the morning last night because I just had to.

Like I was just like, you know what? It's time. So when did you first see it? Because it came out in 99. I saw it when I was in junior high for the first time. And I think I was like really discovering Paul Walker ater at that time because fast and the furious had come out and i was like well who is this going back yeah and then i discovered she's all that and then i think i watched it maybe a thousand times like i've seen this movie so many times i own it

on dvd i just just kept re-watching i thought it was genius. I was like, Freddie Bynes Jr., you got to make that girl beautiful. Art is weird. You know, that's the big thing in this movie. It's like, if you're an artist, you're a fucking weirdo. You're weird. I just love that also the art is also very dark. Like it's like either like clown based. Like it's like a lot of weird clowns.

I was personally triggered. Yeah. It's just like, Oh yeah. Also like the mean girl artists like Clea Duvall. Oh, that character. Oh my God.

She is everything to me. Like I, when I, I was scared to go to high school thinking I would meet a Clea Duvall who would like tell me to kill myself so I could become a famous artist which is one of my I was texting I was telling Caitlin I was like this is one of my new favorite because some will occasionally propose an asterisk to the Bechdel test of like I feel even though it technically does pass the Bechdel test that if two named female characters have a conversation

about why one female character should kill herself yeah it shouldn't pass the mental test that seems too violent that's the first theme that technically passes the mental test for me in this movie where it's clean of all tells rachel that she should kill herself just like who does that right i was just like whoa a new conundrum that you just the onion continues to reveal yeah and that's just the beginning fucking crazy it was so that's so early in the movie and then it's and then the movie yeah the whole rest there's no character there's no character actor in this movie that you're just not like whoa okay wait hold on a second we're in the middle i was like oh kieran culkin is the child yes kieran call my favorite culkin

kieran's pretty good also the the dad character kevin pollack kevin pollack probably the best character he has multiple podcasts on how stuff works i see him almost like three days a week and i saw him and it just occurred to me, I was like, holy shit, that's Kevin. Now I can't wait to go this next week and be like, dude, you're the dad and she's the mom. And I love that. I can't wait to fan out so hard. I feel like he's going to be so upset. Well, last time I saw him, I was like, oh, you're the brother in Better Things that the mom doesn't like.

And he was like, yeah. So now I get to be like, dude, you're the checked out pool cleaning father and she's all that and i never made that connection literally mr pool kevin pollack has one especially really good scene in this movie and then there's one scene where he's like yeah freddie prince jr come into my house i'm wearing a baseball cap also i'm getting ready for bed but i'm not gonna take my hat off also i'm still wearing my name tag that says mr pool on my bathrobe anyways i'm gonna let freddie prince jr into my house and wait to french my daughter karen calkin's also here if you're interested and it's also like she may have also almost gotten raped right oh my god the

narrative at the end where it's like oh yeah paul walker almost raped me but thank god i had a foghorn with me and you're just like we'll get there but i have so much to say about the whole third act of the movie it's bananas things come together i mean it comes together like the the movie like my top note for this movie i scrolled back up to my very long evernote for this movie and i was like okay this is, I scrolled back up to my very long Evernote for this movie. And I was like, okay, this is the movie where in the next to last scene, ironically, the protagonist says, you know, sexual harassment is still a big issue these days. I took a screen grab of that.

And literally says it as a joke. Like, it is wild. It's wild. So wait, Anna, you've seen this movie many, many, many times. Jamie, you had never seen it. I saw it last night slash the night before. It came out in 99. I was like 13. So like peak age to be watching this. I don't think I saw it right away. I definitely didn't see in theaters. I probably saw it maybe probably within the year of it coming out. But I think that was the only time I had two very specific memories from the movie one was the kid who eats the pizza with pubes on it i remember

that being a thing that's like a reference to like a legal case that happened in the early 90s but oh whoa i didn't realize that i listen i have an encyclopedic knowledge of puke related crimes so i did recognize that right away good good, good to know. Let me just really quickly Google 1991 pube crimes and I will find out what I'm talking about. Please. Okay. And then the other memory I had from it was Rachel Lee Cook's line toward the end

where she's like, am I a bet? Am I a bet? Am I a fucking bet? Yeah. I just, for some reason, that's seared into my memory. Thank you so much.

That's a tearjerker moment. Anita Hill versus Clarence Thomas. That's what I'm thinking about when I think about how in the 90s, pube-related crimes do show up in movies again and again and again because Anita Hill rightfully did sue Clarence Thomas because of pubes on a Coke can. But we see... That's a monument case.

It's a huge case. And it's something that I learned about for some reason. I learned about it at a very young age on that VH1 show. I love the nineties. Everyone's like, well, isn't that hilarious? The 91 episode,

they're like, I need a hell in the peers. And it's very pubes shamey. But as a lifelong pubes advocate, I was like, Oh, interesting. And I was like that my antenna was up.

So throughout the nineties, especially in a shamey way, pubes are brought up again and again and again as a form of punishment. And I had never seen this movie. And I was like, oh, weird. So in 99, we're, the first time pubes are discussed in a court of law, like, acknowledged as a thing that every human being has in a serious way. press at the time is very like oh god this woman's losing her mind about this dude putting his puke because it was like he was putting pubes on her stuff as punishment and like coercion and shit like that and so anyways we see in 90s culture anytime you see pubes show up in popular media post 91 as a way to punish someone it is indirectly a reference to this specific legal case. Wow.

Just a fun fact. The more you know. Yeah. Thank you, Jamie. Now you know. Now, anytime you get a pubes question. Oh, boy. Well, anyways, that's your new Bechtelcast, Jamie's Pube Corner.

Should I do the recap? Mm-hmm. Please do. So She's All That is about Rachel Leigh Cook's character's name is Lainey Boggs. They're all in high school. She's an art kid. She's a dork. And she's not popular.

But Zach. Rachel Leigh Cook, who we should say, recent episode, the lead of Josie and the Pussycats. Josie. Oh, yes. A much better movie than this meanwhile there's a character named zach seiler played by freddie prince jr and he is the class president he's one of the smartest kids in the class he's a star athlete he's super handsome and super popular and he's dating the like hottest girl in school until she breaks up with him his poor fragile male ego is very hurt so he's like oh what do i do he is

coerced by paul walker let's be straight right so paul but he agrees to it which is he's coerced by paul walker he's not okay i'm gonna stand out for freddie prince jr throughout because okay i know that zach and Freddie Prinze Jr. are not the same person. I understand how it is. But every time I see Freddie Prinze Jr. on screen, I just am so proud. Because Freddie Prinze Jr. had to overcome so much adversity.

He's the son of Freddie Prinze. Never met his father, who's like a comedian who like killed himself never met him died before either right before or right after freddie prince jr's born freddie prince who was like this prodigal prodigal prodigal very good very good stand-up comedian who's very involved in the comedy store scene in the 70s 70s and 80s killed himself when freddie prince jr was very young by all standards freddie prince jr should never have escalated you know because he came from tragedy had this very like difficult upbringing freddie prince jr i think overcame so much. Freddie Prinze Jr. has been in a thriving marriage with Sarah Michelle Gellar,

who has a great cameo in this movie for 17 years. He has three children. I was reading about him last night, and I was just like, I had a feeling in my stomach of just like, I'm just so thrilled for Freddie Prinze Jr. that he has a stable life. He really owned the 90s he really did and he and i would say he's a charismatic guy yeah he i mean for this for this terrible character he's playing i would say fred prince jr he knew how to be the exact person he was

in a few movies and then he married sarah michelle geller after scooby-doo and also this establishes a clear lie i don't know why i'm being okay this also establishes a connection between freddie prince jr and lillard and we see them later in the scooby-doo franchise as fred and shaggy another critical so anyways we establish the Prince Lillard aesthetic here, and I just think, anyways, I'm very proud of Freddie Prinze Jr. and everything he's accomplished. You can't help but root for him in the film. Like, you know he's doing a bad thing, but you're like, yeah, you know what?

Get her to fall for you, man. And then you learn about his life story, and you're just like, he's just. His whole, like, real, like, privileged issues of, like, oh, Dartmouth or Harvard or Yale. Which Ivy League school? And his dad's just, like, and then his dad's actually quite understanding. It's just like, well, if it's really this stressful. His very hot understanding dad. Oh, my God.

The end, the way that that, like, side plot ends where it's, like, Freddie Prinze Jr. we found out very early in the movie has been accepted to every college in a very manic acceptance style where when he's walking through it welcome to Harvard it's like there's no way

that that's how that happened on like very cheap paper they didn't even like bother to like print it out on like he's nice they laser jetted it

it was horrible and it was just like welcome to Harvard Freddie yeah they were all like all caps, congratulations. Like, what? And then at the end, Freddie says something like, it's not that easy. You can't just sift through a pile of papers and choose one. And then his dad goes like, that's what being an adult is.

You sift through a pile of papers and you choose one. And you know what? He's not wrong. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. Like, yeah, that's what you do. And at the end, I was just like, oh, his dad, you know, the whole time it's like, we're really, the plot is really trying to justify why Zach is such an asshole. And at the end, it is not successful.

I'm being like, well, and at the end, he really was just being kind of avoidant. And his dad was pretty understanding about his choice. All he had to do was be like, dad, I'm stressed. And his dad was like, oh, why didn't you say so? Right. That was like all the entire conflict was. It's almost as if men have problem expressing their feelings. Okay.

So the rest of the story slash the whole story is that Zach Seiler, you know, class president star of the school gets broken up with. So he is coerced, but he also agrees to it like a bet basically by his friend Dean played by Paul Walker. Paul Walker, rest in power is as I like to call him. And Dean says, Oh,

well, is it Zach that suggests this where he's like, I could make any girl here prom queen yeah and you know I don't need that much time to do it and he's like okay I'll yeah prove it I'll bet you so it's Freddie Prinze Jr.'s character who suggests the whole thing so he's not that much of a feminist icon as is Jamie you would lead us to believe I am proud of him okay I'm not proud of this character I'm proud of Freddie Prinze Jr. Got it. Okay. So Dean's like, okay.

Dean and their friend Preston played by Julie Hill, who is my favorite. He plays Sam in Holes and he's the cutest. I can't wait till we do Holes. And then I don't know who plays Kissing Kate Barlow in that movie, who plays his love interest. I forget what her name is. Oh, that's a Patricia Arquette. God, what a fuck. I'm like, I would pay for that sex tape. Would pay.

Anyways. Okay. So back on track. Hot match. So Dean and Preston, to a lesser extent, are like, okay, we'll bet you. You know, we'll pick out a girl for you and you have to turn her into prom queen within the next eight weeks. Just to see if you're as big of a big man on campus as you say you are so they pick laney boggs the weird art girl who great art girl name i will say

so zach starts to pursue her in an attempt to like befriend her and maybe think that he's romantically interested in her so that he can take her to prom and make her prom queen she's resistant at first but for reasons we don't necessarily entirely understand, she starts to be receptive to his basically stalking her. And then they hang out more and more. He takes her to a party. It doesn't go well. She gets a makeover to fix her, quote unquote.

We'll talk about that. I'm sorry. Are you suggesting that being in a relationship cannot fix someone? Because if not, I have to leave. No, I'm suggesting, are you suggesting that being in a relationship cannot fix someone? Because if not, I have to leave. No, I'm suggesting that all women need to be made over to feel more confident about themselves. Just wait until I take my glasses off and you guys all lose your minds. Women just come and you miss them.

Well, you let your hair down and you took your glasses off. I'm quite beautiful behind these lenses. Oh my God. Wait, did Anna Paquin body shame you into characterization? As someone who regularly wears glasses, I find this movie very offensive, suggesting that women who wear glasses can't be hot and don't care for it.

I agree. What if I told you I had a moment in the mirror this morning where I took my glasses off and I was like, oh my God, who is that? I'm like so like gaslighted. She's beautiful. Yeah, just talking to myself. But then you did a little pratfall and you're like, I'm still awkward. Speaking of, Lainey Boggs falls no less than three times in this movie.

Oh God. Such a weird, stupid thing that happens in all these movies. Just to remind you, even though she's hot now, she's still awkward. It's the whole Bella Swan thing. Bella Swan, Lizzie McGuire, et cetera. She's always wearing ankle-length aprons. If you took that apron off, you wouldn't be as clumsy. You would not be tripping on this floor-length garment you're constantly wearing. Okay, so the rest of the story is that she's hanging out more and more with Zack Seiler.

He starts to realize maybe he's actually into her because she's beautiful all of a sudden. And maybe she's also into him. And also for reasons we don't necessarily understand because as far as we know, they're not compatible in any way. But they like each other because they're both hot. So he asks her to or he doesn't get to ask her to prom. She finds out about the bet. Then she agrees again for reasons we don't understand, agrees to go to prom with Paul Walker. Everyone gets wind of the fact that he's only taking her out to prom so that he can try to score with her.

Zach finds out about this because Lainey's friend, Jesse, is like, hey, go save woman. Hey, why didn't you go save the woman? And he's like, okay, I'll go save woman. And then a bunch of scenes that should play out on screen are just skipped over. And then we see the scene at the end where Zach is like, oh, I didn't. He doesn't even really apologize. He's just like, you know, I made that bet. He does not apologize. He does not.

I went back to be like, wait a fucking second. Does he at any point even remotely apologize? He explains why he did the bad things he did, but never apologized for it. He says, I made the bet before I got to know you, and what I lost in the bet was my best friend, she being his new best friend. But never does he say, I'm sorry for manipulating you, anything like that. No, I made triple sure that he does not. Right. So then they kiss, and they're fine, and and they're in love and the movie's over.

We don't mention the thick male icon from The Mighty Ducks who does appear throughout this movie who I really love, who appears as character Jesse James, who ends up with Anna Paquin, who dresses like a bride to the prom. And they do end up together. That is the couple I personally am rooting for by the end of the movie is thick kid from the mighty ducks and Anna Paquin. We know that because she fat shames him throughout the film. Everyone stop eating that you fucking fatty. Like,

it's just like, what? Why? Their first scene on screen together. She's like, are you really eating before 10 a.m.? And the thick kid from Mighty Ducks is like, um, I, and then he immediately starts to apologize. I'm like, I'm on his side.

He's like, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to eat before lunch. He has some like weird twinking. He's like, they're delicious. And she's like, you said you would lose weight. It's like back off. Yeah. It's not a great precedent to set.

One of the first things she says in the entire movie is like, what about losing 10 pounds? Right. Like she immediately fat shames her best friend, her best friend, her only friend who's a thick icon. And I really, I really was like, oh my god, it's the guy from The Mighty Ducks. And I'm just like, I have an attachment to him. Okay, I

would argue there's a lot of shades of gray in this film and I don't... Sorry for calling it a film. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's barely a movie. Produced by Miramax, by the way. Miramax! Opening scene, you're like... Produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein.

And you're just like, oh no. Harvey and Bob on the scene for this one. They're the ones signing off on this. But I feel like, and again, there's so much wrong with this movie. The few things it does right. She does fat shame her only friend, scene one. After class shaming her brother for being like, there are kids in, I forget what country, who have been working in factories for three hours already.

I'm going to spit in Kieran Culkin's juice. And so it's like, okay, she's a little uptight, you know? Like that's how it's going to be. That's her whole thing. Socially conscious. When he's like, they're at the beach, he's like, check out that water. That's socially when he's like they're at the beach he's like check out that water that's literally what he says check out that water which is like great pick up line works on me every time do you know how much like like gallons of waste is dumped into

the ocean and he's just like uh why can't you just be chill she's like sorry quit wigging out okay i'll get to that in a second. Remind me about intelligent shaming. Okay. But first, I do think it is slightly positive, even though she is body shaming him the entirety of their friendship. It is slightly positive to see a female-male, both straight, friendship in a high school movie that is non-sexual and involves no pining on either party because that is something that i feel like is very rare to see where originally when you see this

jesse character it's like oh he's probably secretly in love with her and you fall into this kind of john hughes like oh he probably loves her and she's unattainable and all this stuff but throughout the movie they do remain firmly friends and at one point it's like well i've known you for so long i don't know how to view you that way it's like a sexual being yeah and he's mostly pushing her to freddie prince jr zach siler which is problematic yeah but ultimately i feel like for a high school friendship that sort of like oh date the popular guy sure why not right there's no sense of like oh she friend zoned me which is exactly which i think is a very common trope and i had so many friendships like that in high school with like two people who in theory could be attracted to each other but just aren't

and and that being okay i feel like that does not happen in movies almost ever and i thought that was like oh that kind of reminds me of me and my best friend in high school who just never had the desire to french each other. And felt weird about it because all media said that we should want to French each other, you know. So that I thought was good. Intelligence shaming. Next point. In these teen movies, every time a woman is smart and has very specific knowledge, like Rachel Lee One one piece cook does,

it's made to make her look uptight. Whereas every time in a rom-com where a male character is very smart, he is made to look sensitive. So intelligence is used to like demonize female characters very often where it's used to like give depth to male characters. Yeah, that's very true. Okay. Sorry. So you're saying that does not happen in this movie well that absolutely does happen almost exclusively he's so smart did you see how quickly he improvised at this performance art

thing right right right whoa he is deep which is like it's just but then there's also that scene where rachel lee cook's character is like i I'm not smart. If you're coming to me because you think I can tutor you, I can't because I'm not smart. I'm just a dork but I'm not smart. She's like a dark artist.

But she is smart. She is. But she's constantly playing it off and then every time she displays it with those specific facts of like,

check out that water and then she knows a specific fact about that water, it's like, oh, you're such a bitch. As opposed to like, oh, she just knows something. You know?

Yeah. She's a bit of a buzzkill, though. She knows exactly what to say to bring the moment down. And you're like, oh, Lainey. She is a buzzkill. I feel like I identify with her. And also her last name is fully Boggs. I love that the dad, like the Kevin Pollak character.

I think his best scene is when he like is doing the Jeopardy. He just gets every answer right. And then looks up to like random JV soccer players. And it's just like, who are you people? It doesn't do anything else. I don't think there's that much comedy in this movie. Like I don't think this movie is that funny. But that scene is very funny to me.

Because he's saying like what are probably like deliberately wrong, funny joke answers to all the Jeopardy questions. But he's saying like what are probably like deliberately wrong funny joke answers to all the Jeopardy questions but he's so deadpan about it. I'm going to ask him this week. I'm like, tell me about the insides of all that.

Oh my God, please report back. Please report back. So the movie, yeah, it does like maybe a small fraction of a good thing

but for the most part it's just like ripe with like very problematic stuff because like it bad at its core this movie is about a boy tricking a girl into dating him so that he can quote-unquote fix her to turn her into the prom queen so that he can win a bet which is miraculously in spite of the specificity you just gave something that happens in multiple movies yeah it's a common premise especially for like teen romance kind of things like that and i understand it makes for a good story that has a lot of conflict and there's a

lot of secrecy and all that but it's not good storytelling and then it means that a female character usually is being manipulated by a man who will later end up being her love interest who she ends up with just a relationship built on lies yeah exactly like i think that this in some ways and there's so many variations on this exact theme of like altering a woman to your specifications and then accepting her and apologizing in retrospect or in the case of this movie not apologizing well i made a list of all like of many many movies where this happens where a woman gets a makeover to quote unquote fix her we go back to cinderella with this one cinderella is at the top of my list. She's all that. Clueless. Miscongeniality. Princess Diaries.

Grease. Never Been Kissed. Devil Wears Prada. Pretty Woman. My Fair Lady. What a Girl Once. Josie and the Pussycats. There is a makeover scene.

It's not as egregious as it normally is. But Rachel Leigh Cook is relevant. Working Girl. Sabrina. Breakfast Club. Jawbreaker. My Fair Lady. The list goes on.

I said that one. Oh, sorry. How dare you? There's also like aggressive. Well, because this movie is intended to be an adaptation of Pygmalion, which My Fair Lady is. There's also this aggressive amount of like girl on girl shaming. Oh, so much.

The women are so mean to each other. Like the cattiness level. Exclusively, yeah. There's a female friendship that barely gets explored, and I wish it was explored much more, but between Gabrielle Union's character and Josie, not Josie. Lainey. Lainey.

Josie and the Pussycats. And also her. Who could forget? Where, like, basically we don't ever find out what Gabrielle Union's character's name is in the movie. Also, Gabrielle Union is fully 26 years old in this movie. Her character's name that we know via looking at IMDb

is Katie, but I don't think we find it out in the movie. Same with Lil' Kim's character. You do hear her name at the very, very end in the graduation ceremony whenever her name gets called. They're like Sebastian Seawater. They call a number of wild names that

I wrote down. So Lil' Kim's character's name is Alex and then Gabrielle Union is Katie. So Katie and Lainey Katie basically decides that Taylor, the popular girl who breaks up with Zack Seiler Who I would argue is to an

extent an inadvertent feminist icon. We'll get there. I'm gonna probably disagree but i'm willing to hear your argument wait taylor is taylor yeah she's rough we'll get there but katie's like i have an argument for taylor okay but katie's like i don't want to be friends with taylor anymore she's a bully and i don't really like her i'm gonna befriend laney and that seems like she's generally pretty nice to her and i wish that was explored more or at all, really. But it hardly is.

No. There's not a lot of development within the characters. Other than that's a bitch. He's mean. She's weird. He's hot and popular and has a parking spot. Right. Whereas the plot doubles down on Lainey in a way that it sometimes, to me, is confusing.

To the point where even the art girls are very aggressive and mean towards her in a way that i don't think is fully explained no that's what i understand is what is clea duvall's character's problem what are her parents why is she so fucked up everywhere and what does she why does she appear so many times in the movie yeah to shame lanny when it's like in theory this is lanny's circle so why does everyone hate to shame Lainey when it's like, in theory, this is Lainey's circle. So why does everyone hate her so much? It's like just her. Like she's just a weirdo.

And that's that. Like when Taylor sees her at the party, she like walks over. Like I don't think I've ever seen a mean girl care that much about another person being at a huge party. It's like very cartoonish the way without like a very specific because i feel like the only time we see mean girls and weird girls in conflict in movies is when it's like established like they used to be best friends or there was some sort of context but there's nothing there's no connection between them it's just sheerly antagonistic at that point it doesn't even seem like she knows that laney's there with zach right because she's like it appeared her and matthew lillard right

showed up wasted so let's talk about the scene where they okay so the bed is made between freddie prince jr who i love and paul walker rest in power right delay is also there but he is of course sidelined the entire movie even though he is the voice of reason in that friend group and is repeatedly the one that's like, hey, this might be fucked up. And everyone's like, shut up. But there is a scene where Paul Walker presents Freddie Prinze Jr. with the central challenge of the movie,

which is like, oh, well, you know, Taylor broke up with you. And first, the central plot of this movie is based on the fact that Freddie Prinze Jr. finds heartbreak emasculating. And he is when Taylor breaks his heart, which I will later argue is like not the worst thing she could do in the whole world. And she's kind of shamed for it. But like, you know, Freddie Prinze Jr. is hurt and emasculated and feels bad about being broken up with this girl who he dated who he cares about but he has to prove that that is not the case when paul walker says well the only way you can show me that you're not a fucking pussy is by choosing a random girl

and exploiting and gaslighting her into being hot to your standards and going to prom with her, which is a very specific ask from Paul Walker, which I think reveals that Paul Walker's character is a full-on sociopath. No, he comes up with this top of the dome. He's like, you know what you should do. I wrote that in my notes as Paul Walker's a sociopath. Really? Because even at the end, he was just like,

guys, we got this hotel room 409 or the end he was just like guys who got this hotel room 409 or like whatever yeah i'm just like i'm gonna fuck her and you're just like what it all seems very planned yeah he's a full-on sex like i just paul walker's character is fascinating but but basically he like challenges his friend, if you're heartbroken and if you show emotion, you're a pussy. So do this instead. And Freddie Prinze Jr. takes the bait, says, okay, I'll do it.

And then there's this scene where it is literally the male gaze for like two minutes where they're just looking at various high school female characters and criticizing them. They're speaking about them so actively as they're like, I'm talking about you and you're walking by me.

And I'd be like, well, she's interesting. She's got a nice rack, kind of short, Chelsea Clinton vibe going. Yeah, it's like, she's right there. And she's just like,

whatever, I'm just minding my own business. And their objective, they state explicitly, is to make her a prom queen. Mm-hmm. Right? Because that's what

all women strive to be. And when they land on Lainey Boggs, who I'd be remiss not to notice, is hot, but wearing glasses and an apron.

And has extensions in. Oh my God. Right. The worst extensions like ever. So she's definitely getting an haircut at some point. It's a horse's, so she's definitely getting an haircut at some point.

It's a horse's mane that she has scotch tapes to her head. Anna McQueen even calls her like, it's a horse's mane or something. Yeah. She's like, this mane has to go. And it's like, we all agree it's not hers.

But there's a line where Freddie Prinze Jr., he has already criticized five or six women. And he says, fat I can handle. Weird boobs. Bad personality. Maybe some sort of fungus. I mean, scary and inaccessible is another story. Jesus.

Which explicitly states the state of women at the time of this movie. And just like, there it is they really go out of their way to be like these women are so thirsty for freddie prince jr because he remember he like walks in looks at a photo of himself just like oh looking good me and then says hey connie and some girls like oh my god you talk to me and the girl's like your name is yeah and she's like she's already turned on her friend to be like you bitch how dare you point that out i'm saying it almost passes the vector test except we don't learn the other girl's name i know so it's like but they're all no they're talking about a man

so never mind it creates this vibe that all the women are like for themselves and they're out to get each other over dudes and it's just such that whole high school is a bad vibe and you got usher talking shit over all of it which is just like what school would let this dj continue in defense of the casting director of this movie can you find in 1999 a better cameo adjacent role for someone giving the school announcements at a high school then usher in the same year that you got it bad comes out and then he comes back in a fedora to dj the prom always for one of the like i freaked out during the scene i was like in my kitchen last night watching this scene and ran out of breath. Had to What, the dance sequence? The Rockefeller skank sequence? Yes, of course.

I had to take a walk. Why is there a five minute dance scene in the movie and there's not enough time to develop a friendship between Gabrielle Union's character and Lainey Boggs? Scrap it. Why? Scrap it. Cut those scenes, make the dance sequence longer. As a feminist, give me more Rockefeller skank dance sequences.

That's the second dance sequence in the film. Yeah. I mean, I honestly think Matthew Lillard is so funny in this movie. He's really good. His whole character is the absolute worst human being. He has a tattoo of himself on his arm. And then he just continues to have no sense of reality like every line about him like he he got paid to eat his own toenail clippings like there's no reality to him and he's an adult man dating a high schooler which

that no one seems to care no yeah no one has any like none of these like rich kids parents care and there's also only one teacher in the entire film which is the art teacher who just like shames laney's like aggressively dark art and that's it shows up every she shows up i think three times and provides exposition there's a scene with her at the end that i really want to talk about because it is wild but yeah like she shows up one of the few women of color in the movie who shows up and it's like here's what's happening in the movie anyways gotta go bye disappears she appears in this scene right before rachel lee cook is told to kill herself right she's like hey

anyways we're in art class gotta go yeah she like, why don't you open up to other people and express art about yourself? You bitch. Try harder. And then some other girl's like, kill yourself. It's just like, what? Why would you keep going to this class? And then this movie does Disney princess Rachel Leigh

Cook's character by saying, also, her mom died. And Kevin Pollak doesn't know what to do because he has a hat and he's Mr. Pool. But he is the most checked out father. He fully is. Does he have any sense of anything going on? But he calls her Pumpkin Nose. But even when he comes down to talk to her,

he's kind of like, hey, you know, like kids go to the prom, right? And you're like, thanks, Dad. That did remind me of, I got emotional during that scene because I was just like, my dad would also know how to talk to me. Well, Lainey's character, there's, okay, so there's not a, there's a problem with Lainey's character being written in a way that she's an empathetic character that we want to care about. In that she does a bunch of things where she's either fat shaming her friend or making decisions that make no fucking sense. Like the fact that she keeps agreeing to go out with guys who seem terrible i disagree and i disagree okay well well no keep going but i do

disagree okay but then there's also a problem with the way that uh everyone else is treating her or just the way the movie presents her where like the first thing you basically see her doing after the opening credits when she's like painting and stuff is like bringing food to her brother. So it's like, here girl, have domestic chore, bring boy food. I think that's another way that they Disney princess her though. It's like now she has to be the smartest person in the room and mommy because dad is Mr. Pool and him don't know how to cook eggs. Yeah.

But it's like he's a business owner and we're so hard on him. Like what a loser. He's a pool guy but he also seems to own his own business but fuck that. And also he knows all the answers to Jeopardy so he's clearly educated. Also he lets his children just use any booze in the house to make like crappy margaritas.

Oh yeah. He is no sense. That is never challenged. When Kieran Colgan tries to serve Freddie Prinze Jr. alcoholic beverages, never questioned. Yeah, a 12-year-old is making an 18-year-old boozy drink and everyone's like, fine. And he's just looking at his crossword, does not look up once to know what's even going on inside his home. He's like, I'm wearing a hat. I'm busy. I'm wearing a hat.

But, I mean, with Lainey, like, we hardly see her on screen for the first like 18 minutes of the movie. She's barely there because the protagonist of the story is not her. Zack Seiler, Freddie Prinze Jr.'s character, is the protagonist and that he has the strongest desire because Lainey has no like central goal. The story is happening to her. So she has no agency. Things are just sort of happening at her and she's going along with whatever but she's not doing anything really to drive the narrative it's all Zach and his story so she's stripped of all this agency so that means then that the sympathetic character that we're rooting for the protagonist of this story is someone who's actively manipulating a

woman so it's just like really hard to get behind. But for some reason, like everyone who watched this movie in 1999 were like, yes, this is great. I love this movie. Because they're like, love exists. But you never, it's all about him going to school. Like, is she planning on going to college? We don't know. We found out at the end that she

has applied to a number of art schools and has been recommended. In a scene that i find very interesting see this is where i disagree a little bit and again i did not see this movie at the correct time for me to see it but laney boggs to me strikes me as and at any point if anyone feels differently let me know but as like kind of an avatar kind of character where this movie in 1999 is not meant with the intention of, Oh,

a ton of boys are going to see this movie. This is a girl's movie and it's a young girl's movie. And girls are meant to plug themselves into Lainey Boggs, who feels weird, who feels out of place, who is not fully characterized. I think very intentionally. And then we learn more about this popular male guy who, like, basically,

it's just like the oppressor coming down to the weird girl's level and changing her so that they meet in the middle. But I do feel like this movie is made with the intention of young girls plugging themselves into ladybugs. It's like, oh, this is me. And I feel like the cool is me and i feel like like the cool boys in school don't like me and why is that and maybe that was me i don't know i was really into performance art when i was young i'm not even joking well yeah so i was like i mean not

her kind of performance i don't think i necessarily understood that one but right but it's something adjacent where it's like when i was in like middle school and high school and like formative years like wearing a fucking back brace and being like a weird like a weird girl who genuinely like popular boys would never have just because of how high school works you don't know you could have been someone that they're like should we do the bet on her nosh that back brace you seem like that girl like you seem like the girl potential bet reject you don't know exactly like you seem like the girl that someone could pick out of a crowd of like oh this would be a very hard person to want to fuck like literally and that's how laney is

presented to the audience and i feel like that and because young girls are brought up to feel so insecure about themselves as people and to view themselves strictly based on their bodies which this movie does endorse by changing her body and her appearance i think that we're meant to go into this movie thinking like oh i'm laney boggs and maybe if i'm lucky paul walker will rest in power pick me out of a crowd it's like here's the most unfuckable person in the entire world and then maybe someone who is deeply problematic not fully like who were glorifying this movie will dare to take a second look at me and then and so it's like these movies for me it's like it's so fun

but it also breaks my heart because it's like you can so easily see how you can be pulled into this movie for all the wrong reasons sure and i get that and i also like i think that using the excuse is like under developing a female character so that a wide range of girls can plug themselves into as like the avatar of the story is just bad writing and not a good excuse for a character in a movie like i think that's like you can still depict a human experience and depict an experience that a lot of people can latch on to and identify with and say oh i i wish i was in this scenario with also still fully developing a character and like making her feel like a real person i agree but i also think that there's no like the way that this character is written vaguely enough and broadly enough where it gets to the point of like yeah like performance art

sure painting dead mom like i feel like that's done very intentionally to bring in as many girls who would identify as not normal, as possible, and that's done as a very intentional thing. It is bad writing, but it also does feel very intentional. Sure. I feel like a lot of movies in the 90s did that, though. That was their whole arc of the film. It would be a poorly written film,

but a character you could somewhat relate to because she was a weirdo or he was a weirdo or an outcast. And so you're like, oh, I directly relate to the outcast and the popular person's like oh i relate to zach because god what a life all these women want me like there were characters but no characters like that actually exist though right yeah but don't you like i never really hung out with like popular people in school maybe i mean clearly there were no popular kids like the how they're portrayed in that film but there were still those people who you could kind of tell definitely like were peaking in high school and then there's just nowhere for them to go after that that was a very yeah that felt like a very popular trope of the

night like i recently saw i don't know if you've seen love simon but i feel like it was a much more accurate i mean and i've been out of high school for years. I don't know. 45 years. I'm still in high school. I'm 14 years old. I actually kind of just got there. Well, congratulations. So I don't know what high school is like now, really,

but it feels like a much more accurate depiction of what high school is where there's not. And with that movie, there's several female characters who feel like real people, but it's still a human experience that like even if, you know, people are watching this. I saw this movie and I am not a gay person, but like the experience of hiding something about yourself is so universal that I feel like it's no excuse to underdevelop any one character in a movie for the sake of being like okay well it's because we have to be able little girls have to plug themselves into this like i just and that i think kind of comes down to like the problem of making movies for young people is like at a minimum if you're at a point in your

life where you can make a movie about anything you're like 10 years out of high school you're 10 years out of and so you have like a 10 year amount of dissonance of like what it is like to actually be a young person and feel those things. And you have 10 years worth of, you know, bitterness and additional life to heap upon whatever that experience was. So it is hard to make an accurate depiction

of high school life because by the time you're able to, you're so far out of it. Right. Yeah, I don't know who She's All That was made for. Because I feel like I was too young watching. There's so much stuff like pubes on pizza. That part is confusing.

There's just like drinking and weird telling people to kill themselves. There's a lot of dark stuff in this movie that I don't understand why I was watching it at a young age. Yeah, the audience is like 15 to 18 years old. I don't know. It's such a small demographic of people. I want to talk about like the third act, basically. The whole third act of the movie where we are basically robbed of a scene. So it's prom.

They're at prom. We see the scene where Paul Walker is like, oh, I'm totally going to nail her. I paid $300 for this hotel room. Hell yeah. Drinking out of a300 for this hotel room. Hell yeah. Drinking out of a flask in the bathroom. Hell yeah. Lainey's friend, Jesse, overhears this. So he runs and tells Anna Paquin's character, who is Zach Seiler's sister.

Dressed like a bride. About this. Who seems to be like a troubled sister who has to go to a private school. Because she's too crazy. And then they run off and tell Zach. So now everyone knows about this plan for Paul Walker to try to have sex with Lainey, except for Lainey. Then we cut to a scene where we're at Lainey's house.

We see her dad and her brother talking about pools. Lainey comes home. She's like, oh man, I did have fun. That was a fun night. You're right. I should have gone to prom and I'm glad I did. And. She's like, oh, man, I did have fun. That was a fun night. You're right. I should have gone to prom, and I'm glad I did. And then she's like, okay, bye. I'm going to go to bed.

And then they're like, just kidding. Freddie Prinze Jr. is here. And then we see her tell him about her interaction with Paul Walker. Why we do not see this play out on screen is insane. Because does this scene exist somewhere i have to believe it does and that it was just cut out because the reason we need this scene is that it's one is just like bad writing that it's not there because it propels the story forward and then to leave it out is just like okay wait what the fuck happened but then it would have

given her an opportunity to like display some agency, which we see her have almost none of throughout the entire movie. And it would have let us see her save herself from the manipulation that she's been experiencing throughout the whole movie, where she's like, wait, you're trying to trick me. No, don't do that.

I'm my own woman and I am figuring this out and I don't want you, like, I don't want this. But we don't see it play out on screen we only see her kind of mention it later on when okay final kevin polygraph but like this scene where she's like sort of slow dance like allowing freddie prince j. to not apologize for gaslighting her outside of her own in-ground pool. Pools all over this movie. Pools popping up

right and left. And then Kevin Pollack says, I'm still wearing my hat, but you know what I do have time to do? Pop on this ambient light for you. And then he winks of like, yeah, Freddie Prince Jr., French my daughter, you're not apologizing to. And that's the last we see of him in the movie.

Yeah. And then maybe they were like, oh, we really can't have her attacking Paul Walker in this film. So they cut it out because I don't get it because I remember the first time I saw this, like I was like, she's going to get raped. I thought this movie was going to take a whole nother like angle and just take a left turn. And Paul Walker is going to go to jail. Like, I don't know what I thought was going to get raped. I thought this movie was going to take a whole nother angle and just take a left turn. And Paul Walker was going to go to jail. I don't know what I thought was going to happen. But for the longest time, I would just be like, how come she doesn't react?

I had been in that situation where I had to blow horn someone out of my room to a second location. But she walks in like, ugh, dad, what a fun night. One hiccup, but I'm home. And then he in like, ugh, dad, what a fun night. I had fun. One hiccup, but I'm home. And then he's like, well, good news. I let Freddie Prinze Jr.

in already. So in case you weren't triggered already. More dudes for you. I've let someone else in. And then she makes the joke, sexual harassment, big deal. And then says,

don't apologize. We're dating. It's bonkers. It is bananas. Well, I wonder if they did shoot that scene with Paul Walker and it was maybe deemed too, because you had, right, he would have had to come at her in such a way where she, ear horn blows him in the ear.

We do see the repercussion of that. Oh, yeah. Right. He's now mentally disabled because he can't he's here now right because he's sitting next to i think he's sitting next to little kim yeah and she's like your call and he's like what because i tried to rape someone last night and it didn't work he's like actually she's a graduate disabled him like he's incapable like he's like chew like sucking there's something weird

happening i have a theory that in dark yeah i'm not good not good her brother simon uh kieran colkin's character is wearing what i think is love simon he's wearing what i think is a hearing aid yeah he's wearing an entire movie which is i have a theory i have a theory that she keeps that foghorn around and maybe when they were younger she blew it in his ear and she permanently yeah also which is the least she can do so i do question the relationship just because i grew up with a little brother who i think would be about the difference between ladybogs and her little brother would to be like four or five years and it does bother me that it's like Kieran Culkin's little brother character

ends up viewing Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Zach character as like an ally and someone he can really rely on, where her family, like both the two males and her family unit, end up pretty clearly allying themselves with freddie prince jr yeah the person who it appears that they know is lying to her as like here's someone you should end up with and i found that to be like kind of like jarring of like man if i was only growing up with my dad and my brother and they both pushed this same dude who was tricking me, you know, like realistically.

And again, I feel like we have to realistically plug ourselves into a 16-year-old girl trying to relate to Lainey Boggs at this time. In what world would you be like, no? Like, it's like if everyone in your life is like, here he is. We let him into the house. We're turning on the ambient lights it feels like of course you're gonna want to be with that person they're like just being like you're such a wet blanket like even her best friend is like you need this like you need this yeah everyone wants like the the little brother the dad the best friend like everyone even like

uh gabrielle union's character is like this is good for you come to the party like you need this like teacher yeah even our auntie's like come. Come to the party. You need this. Her art teacher. Yeah, even her art teacher is like, come on, man. Date Zach. You fucking need this so your art will be better. It's like everyone

is telling her she has to get out of her bubble and date this popular guy and that is that and that's how you'll make it out of here. And if she doesn't,

she's an uptight little bitch. Yeah. And she's obsessed with her dead mother and that's not okay. She has to move that back on. There's a scene that takes place at the prom that really stood out to me in terms of, like, a scene that says so much with allowing the protagonist to say literally a couple of words maximum. Where Lainey's at the prom, she has been hodified by Anna Paquin and Freddie Prinze Jr.

She is completely altered from the first way we know her to be. Her art teacher comes up to her and says that she is very talented and that she's finally achieved her full potential. And she says, like, I've been spending four years trying to open you up, Lainey Boggs. Whoever it is that did it, don't let them go. And then access the scene because she is the queen of exposition. And the only thing Lainey says in this scene is like when she's like, oh, I recommended you to every school you applied to.

This is the first we hear that Lainey has applied to schools at all. Right. She has any interest in anything. Right. And Lainey says, you're kidding. That's all she says in this entire scene. And then the art teacher sees herself out. We hear that, you know, we in theory, teenage girls hear that, like, whoever opened you up to accepting the fact that your mom is fucking dead is like the person you should have sex with till you die.

And then and then we see the rest of the scene is wordless we just see this like lingering shot on laney and she looks over at freddie prince jr who's also looking over at her and then she just like looks and we see her again and in that scene we realize it's like he's what made her art good for four years even though she's known him for three weeks right and he's been lying to her the entire time like that scene i found i watched it like three times or just like that there's so little dialogue in that scene but it communicates so much to its intended audience of like no matter how long you've been working towards a goal and no matter what your goals are no matter what you're good at there is a way to credit it to a loser who is lying to you

and people will find a way to make that happen and i just oh god that scene drove me fucking that teacher could have easily just been like did you get laid because you seem so much more chill right like that it was the same idea like whoever opened you up whoa man literally opened you up whoever cracked that hymen really got you into college for years i've been telling you to just go get that dick so you would stop making depressing art about your dead mom it's like okay teach get the fuck out of here you've been nowhere they're literally students at parties going insane and you were just show up to be like clea duvall was like passing out in a pile of her own vomit and was like how does it feel like what was that no good like role models at this school

because these students are all trash clea duvall is also visibly 30 she's like how does it feel to make the best artist at school barf? I don't know. Here's a few things I want to say. At one point, Zach tells Lainey, would it hurt you to smile once in a while? Telling her to smile. There's a lot of on the nose moments. Yeah.

And she's like, did you know smiling can lead to cancer? They're like, bitch. A female faculty member surprise kisses Zach after he wins prom king. That's not okay. Yeah, that's weird as well. I didn't notice that. Not on the mouth, but she grabs him and pulls him in and kisses him on the cheek. Are we to believe that sarah

michelle geller's cameo is her playing buffy and that that's some sort of like clever crossover thing because she looks like buffy the character in the movie i just like in terms of that she has an updo she has no lines though she has no lines exactly right i just have to believe it's some like weird like oh because they're like all in southern california and like maybe this town is like adjacent to sunnydale or whatever i think you're actually being a big dork by asking this question because i've never seen buffy the vampire slayer and i don't know what the fuck it's about um buffy is great you gotta watch okay stop triggering me because every loser i've ever met has said that. Okay. Wow.

Sorry, guys. I'm sorry. I really polarized the room. Are you turning into a real character in this movie? Yeah, geez. Way to bash your female friends. That's why you're defending Taylor. Guys, actually be a good sport and then grab your own tits and be like, hi.

There's also a scene where after Lainey is nominated for prom queen, Jesse is sort of like directing people where to hang up their posters that are like, hey, vote for Lainey for prom queen. And then there's this one moment where he's just like, you gay students, put yours over there. And the banner says something like, come out and vote for Lainey. And it's just like, whoa, no. I did kind of giggle at that.

That's a bad 99 joke. That's not great. That joke does not age well. I kind of thought maybe the best friend might be gay. I was like, maybe there's like an angle where he's also into Freddie Prinze. I don't know. That was like one of the things when I was originally watching it. Like, oh, maybe there's something we don't know.

But then he gets with Anna Paquin. But then he gets with Anna Paquin. And do they actually get together? They hang out, but we don't see them like. Oh, that's true. They could just be. Because she seems into guys. I think her exact line was, oh, her brother's there.

And he just got kicked out of like military school. So that's her vibe. Well, what I hope for her is that she grows out of being her own brother's stooge. Because she seems way smarter and more decisive than him. And so in the first scene we see her, like, and this is, again, how movies constantly discard, like, an initially strong female character's potential. Where we see her initially, the first time we see Anna's's character she's nagging him aggressively and it's like calls him a bitch magnet she calls him a bitch magnet and she's like you gotta go for different kind of girls blah blah blah and then the next time we see her somehow something has

happened that now she's full-on willing to give laney boggs a makeover and it's like this is not the character we saw in the first scene this is someone who's suddenly very dependent on whatever her brother asks and it was like a little dissonant personal assistant yeah yeah and then at the end it's like oh maybe she's gonna date the friend which i and again i'm rooting for them but yeah that character felt very weird and underdeveloped of like she was introduced to someone who i thought it was like oh this is someone who could talk sense into like the zach character but then she sort of just ends up folding to whatever his one of the first things she says is so who's the lucky rebound skank like she right not a feminist icon and i wouldn't know she's like a big brother icon yeah so it's mostly paul walker

saying horrible things about women but the way several different characters talk about women in this movie is bonkers because you have lines like Paul Walker saying, well, well, well, look who's back from spring break looking all fine and shit. And then Dulé Hill in his defense says in response to that, on behalf of all black people shut up usher is talking about women he calls someone magically delicious um paul which is also okay that's also how you would describe lucky charm c but he's talking specifically about how a woman looks paul walker don't defend he is the actual big brother because he like sees everything he literally is a big brother paul walker later says how does he see all this we don't know what his social circle is at all right we don't know if he has friends or if he's even in high school we don't know zach says there are 2 000 girls in the school and i can bump monkeys with any one of them the lingo in this movie i think paul walk at one point even says, check out the Bobos on Super Freak.

He says that. He talks about how he nailed a flight attendant. A 30-year-old flight attendant. Right. Guys, honestly. A moment for the Bobos. He's talking about Taylor and he says, every girl wants to be her and every guy wants to nail her.

But then Dooley Hill comes around and he's just like, oh, she's basically you with tits. So not a feminist icon. Bobas. She says you with Bobas. You with the Bobas. So it's just like the fact that you see so many characters, mostly male, some female when it comes to Anna Paquin

throwing the word skank around, talk about women so horribly. And it's almost always in the context of how they look or just like how desirable or undesirable they are to men. And it's really gross. And granted, like Paul Walker ends up being a villain and we're not supposed to identify with him. But the fact that like-

But his punishment's so light. It's so light. Mind or hearing loss. And the fact that like zach stays friends with him for so long and agrees to the bet that he sort of initiates and all that stuff it's just like any young like teenage boy who is seeing this movie it's probably like oh those guys are so cool and and that sees how they're talking to women that bet or talking about women was sexual harassment to everybody in the room you cannot walk around

naked that is offensive and then he threw the volleyball so you know the junk was straight out so it's like hello we're all here we don't all don't want to see you naked yeah you can't just like flash the whole school the last frame of the movie is like god and if you're lucky you'll be the girl who naked guy throws his dick volleyball to. Is this a soccer ball? I will let you know. Oh, that's right. This is a soccer ball.

Sorry. I'm so sorry. But everyone's like, woo! Instead of like, yo, put some clothes on. It's like, no one wants to see your flaccid dick at graduation. What are you doing? For your consideration, his hard dick.

Sure, we don't know how flaccid it is. He was super hard waiting to get his name called. Don't flaccid shape Freddy Pritzker. Yeah, the moral compass of this movie is crazy. And we are not, and I think you made a great point just now, we are not given really an alternative to any men, young men especially,

who are seeing this movie. We're not given any alternative to like, oh yeah. And you can also not be the coolest guy in school and also be fine. Like where we sort of see Jesse, but he is seen very much in support to the main female character. And like, I mean really the only male ideal we're given is Freddie Prince Jr., which again, I'm so proud of him and he's done so well in his life.

But Zach as a character, 100% is a bad person. He goes on to be a full on lax bro who does very problematic things for a very long time. I wonder if the ending scene is him getting arrested for public nudity. They're just like, oh, you have a couple of thoughts here. long time i wonder if the ending scene is him getting arrested for public nudity someone calling the police like this is not appropriate this high schooler is 30 why is this happening jamie you said you wanted to come to the defense of taylor i would like to come to the defense of tay to an extent. I just think that at the top of this movie is mainly where I come to Taylor's defense because she does sort of very quickly lapse into a violent female on female. I have to be prom queen character. But at the very beginning where everyone's just like, oh, my God, she's such a bitch.

She made Zach sad. And then we find out minutes later that Zach is willing to exploit any woman on campus to prove that he's a man. So I sort of felt badly. I can't relate with her in that I wasn't a girl like that in high school that had access to unlimited men if you can possibly believe if i didn't have access to unlimited 30 year old freddie prince juniors at this time but like the fact that she is made out to be a villain at the jump to again

in the way that female characters are made to relate to male protagonists she exists to make us feel badly for freddie prince jr so that we can get over the moral jump of him being willing to exploit any girl so it's like we are using a female character to justify a male character exploiting a second female character so taylor's the first step in this insidious sequence and i feel for her because in retrospect if you look at zach on paper he's not a good guy why would you want to be with this guy not that i'm saying that matthew lillard's real world character is the better option but i'm just saying like the movie very quickly demonizes taylor's character for not wanting to be with zach when we find out a minute later

that Zach is not a good person and willing to do anything to get a girl in order to prove his masculinity so I just felt like at the beginning of the movie especially I felt badly for Taylor because I felt like she was you know that character and characters like that who don't exist in real life at all was used as a pawn to characterize the male character. And that bugs me and that always bugs me. And her character worsens throughout the movie. Oh, God. And that, like, all she wants to do is kill other women to be prom queen. But also, you know, a goal-oriented woman so she has a she has more of a defined goal

and desire than laney does yeah again the story just happens to her she does she has no agency she makes no choices and the choices she does make make no sense for her character where she'll be like no paul walker i don't want to go to the prom with you except here i am going to the prom with you like it doesn't mean anything she does. Because she never accepted. Well, to be fair, Kevin Pollak did say, there's a hot guy upstairs. Oh, yeah. And she's just like, well, I might as well go to prom.

He'll send his daughter out with anyone. Like, he didn't even make the connection. One guy took her, and another guy's here. And he's just like, hey, look, these dudes, they love you. Later that night. He's like, well, I later that night he's like well then i recognize him he's been over before karen seems to like him uh i think in an ultimate world that taylor and paul walker's character should end up together because they're both little

conniving bitches definitely go at it uh let's talk about whether or not this movie passes the Bechdel test. It does. Technically. It does. It does a couple times. A few different times. A couple times it does. Women actually interact a lot in this movie. Oftentimes it's only for very, very short exchange. Sometimes it's with women whose names we don't know. Oftentimes they are talking

about men, but there are a few scenes that do pass. One of them is the one where Misty clay duvall's character one of my favorite passes of all time although laney does not respond in that scene but because there's another woman there savannah who's contributing to the conversation i think that it passes there's no way around it there's a scene where well i don't know if this passes or not because again we never learned kat Katie's name in the movie. We only know this from looking it up on IMDb.

But Gabrielle Union, her character and Taylor are talking about her tattoo and then her acceptance speech and how, and a scene that's like very clearly 80 yard. Taylor is like, what? I'm a, I'm a shoe in for prom queen. I could win this thing in fluorescent light and blah, blah, blah. My mom was a prom queen. A good line. So that scene passes the test because there's another character there named Chandler, I want

to say. That's the girl with the short hair, right? Yeah. She's also there talking. Chandler and Lainey had one when they're on the beach and she's basically telling Lainey that she's not fit and can't play volleyball. There's so many body shaming scenes that pass the back to us. Yeah.

That's that scene goes like this. I've seen you in gym class. You run like a girl. Lainey says, I am a girl. Chandler says, you know what I mean? And he says,

obviously I don't. Passes the test, but is not a good pass. The scene where, what the hell is Anna Paquin's character's name? Mack. Mackenzie, right? Yeah, when they talk about makeup, it passes.

Yeah, that passes. Yeah, so there's a few scenes here and there that technically pass the test. Most of them are... Also, Taylor bullying Lainey passes more than one time. More than one time. Right. Lots of problematic passes on this movie.

The best is her just telling her to kill herself. She's like, this is the opening of the film. Really sets a precedent. And do we know, the art teacher, I feel like the art teacher is given a name at some point. I don't think so. Okay, so those scenes don't. Also the movie, even though it does pass the Bechdel test,

does not pass the DuVernay test. Suggest suggesting that a movie should have characters who are people of color and that exist to not just support the white characters. Because in this movie, right, there are like Taylor has friends who are people of color. Zach has friends who are people of color, but they only exist in the story to support their white friends. Also does not pass the loftiest test. There is a bald woman in the movie at the performance art show. I'm aware. But she's not in charge. Oh, that's right.

Stupid movie. I loved it. I did not. Okay. Rating the movie on a nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on its portrayal of women. I'm going to give it a zero to one a nipple scale zero to zero to five nipples based on its portrayal of women i'm gonna give it like a zero to one half nipple like it's just like very low for me because the you're one female uh main character in laney boggs has no agency she has no specific desire of her own she exists to be manipulated throughout the entire story also Also, I wanted to say really quickly that of the movies

that have women needing to be made over and fixed so that they can be more desirable to men, that never happens in the reverse of that, where there's hardly ever movies where men need to be made to be more desirable to women. So it's almost as if men aren't held to that standard of like it's so frustrating because i feel like 10 like you know however many years ago i'd be like we should make a movie like that but it's like no no one should make a movie like that we should

just stop making movies like this and the way that women are talked about the way that so many of the female characters are really nasty to each other just a whole slew of problems with this movie. I have to give it a zero nipple rating. The end. I would give it one nipple just for Clea Duvall being such a strong, independent woman who just talks whatever she wants. That's the only, yeah. Everyone else is just trying to get by. I'm going to give it a nipple as well.

I'm so sorry. And as much as I am trying to get myself out of the habit of giving movies nipples on our iconic writing system for having inklings of useful, valid female characters who are not constantly exploited by the men around them, I do think that there are a lot of seeds of good female characters in that if you're a 16-year-old girl watching this movie, you at least take away that it is okay to like art. At least Lainey is not stripped of her ability to appreciate art. There are some few paltry things that don't suggest you need to

become a tailor in order to be accepted by the norm. But the fact that you are still conditioned to be accepted by the norm is very insidious and bad. And also teenage girls should be conditioned to say like, if someone wrongs you, you should expect an apology from them. And probably not end up with them romantically. And probably not just be like, let Kevin Pollak turn on some mood lighting and just accept your life for the rest of what it is. But there are

the seeds of valid characters. I do like that there are movies out there that teenage girls can plug themselves into. I just don't like the direction that most of those movies take. I'm going to give it one nipple and I'm going to kick it right back to Lainey Boggs. Great. Awesome.

Anna, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for watching this movie with me. Where can we find you? I'm on Twitter at Anna Hosnier, A-N-N-A-H-O-S-S-N-I-E-H. I co-host a podcast called Ethnically Ambiguous on the HowStuffWorks Network. I'm also a producer there

and I produce a show called The Daily Zeitgeist, which is daily. It's news and pop culture. Heard of it, bitch. Both Jamie and Caitlin have been on it. True.

Great episodes. Yeah, listen to Ethnically Ambiguous if you want to hear stuff about the Middle East and being a brown, a modern brown woman in America.

Ooh. Listen to it. It's the best. It's fun. So yeah, find me somewhere. Awesome. Okay. You can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast, Patreon slash Matreon.

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And otherwise... The merch is also very nice. It's so cute. It's buttons and stickers and it's so great. Otherwise, thanks for listening. We love you all. And bye. Bye.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman wiki leaks she exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state listen to crooks everywhere on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas.

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