A film review by Craig J. Koban September 29, 2022

DO REVENGE

2022, Unrated, 118 mins.

Camila Mendes as Drea  /  Maya Hawke as Eleanor  /  Austin Abrams as Max  /  Rish Shah as Russ  /  Talia Ryder as Gabbi  /  Ava Capri as Carissa  /  Alisha Boe as Tara  /  Paris Berelc as Meghan  /  Jonathan Daviss as Elliot  /  Maia Reficco as Montana  /  Sophie Turner as Erica

ORIGINAL FILM

Netflix's new coming of age comedy DO REVENGE is a surprisingly sly and darkly amusing take on...revenge.  It's the kind of film that really wears its cinematic influences as a badge of honor and isn't ashamed to show it to viewers.  

It's kind of like MEAN GIRLS meets DIRTY WORK meets CLUELESS with a dash of HEATHERS thrown in for good measure.  And like Amy Heckerling's iconic CLUELESS (which was a loose retelling of Jane Austen's EMMA, albeit set in a modern high school),  director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (who also co-wrote the film with Celeste Ballard) has made DO REVENGE as a wink-wink homage and retread of Alfred Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, but also set today and with scheming teenagers.  Although the film wears out its welcome with a needlessly long runtime that approaches nearly two hours and some predictable and conventional detours that usually typify this genre, DO REVENGE is a genuinely clever Gen Z take on serving up ultimate comeuppance on those that have wronged you, but with multiple complications being thrown in.   

The very well cast Camila Mendes (TV's RIVERDALE) stars as Drea Torres, who's a hybrid of Cher Horowitz from CLUELESS and Reese Witherspoon from ELECTION in terms of being a limitlessly attractive and popular alpha female at her school that can match her book smarts with her beauty and is fearlessly ambitious when it comes to attaining upcoming college success.  She attends the ultra posh Rosehill Private School and has made it her young life's mission to get into Yale.  She has a squadron of other self-obsessed friends in Tara (Alisha Boe), Meghan (Paris Berelc) and Montanna (Maia Reficco), not to mention that her boyfriend in Max (Austin Abrams, who looks a bit like a blonde Timothee Chalamet) just so happens to be the most popular dude at school.  Drea seemingly has everything she wants, but her social existence gets violently thrown upside down after she attends a decadent party (sponsored by Teen Vogue because the magazine decided to put her mug on one of their covers) and has a video of her sensually undressing to Max being leaked and sent out to the entire student body.  Humiliated, ashamed, and more than a bit angry, she quickly accuses her boyfriend of being the culprit, which he quickly denies, but Drea is still deeply suspicious of him. 

The upcoming summer season is a horror show for Drea, who has seen her social standing among her friends and stature at school taking a massive hit.  If there was only some way that she could prove that the vile Max did the dastardly deed and seek revenge on all of those that have cast her out.  In steps Eleanor (Maya Hawke), one of the school's more socially introverted lesbians that seems like the last person that Drea would ever befriend.  The two ladies do, however, bond over their shared misery, seeing as both have suffered paralyzing humiliation at the hands of their peers and exes.  The pair have a shared epiphany: Why not work together and "do revenge" against their enemies?  And better yet, each of them will secretly infiltrate their respective exes' posses and take them down from the inside - Drea will seek vengeance on Eleanor's former girlfriend and she, in turn, will do the same against Max.  The first obstacle to their plan is that Eleanor is too timid and tomboyish to make her clandestine infiltration plan work, so Drea uses her wealth and pampering skills to give her new friend and ally a gorgeous makeover.  In the early stages, it seems that their two-tiered plan appears to be working marvelously, but as is the case with these types of revenge narratives obstacles come up that cause ripple effects in Drea's newfound friendship with Eleanor, which threatens to undo everything they've worked for the past several months. 

I said earlier that DO REVENGE just confidently swings for the fences in terms of the multiple loving homages that it pays to many past high school films (and, yup, one film from Hitch), but that's not to say that it's some sort of half-hearted or lazy pastiche affair either.  Robinson is aware of her influences and smoothly homogenizes them into her film to create something that feels familiar, but fresh and new all the same.  DO REVENGE also has the look and feel of many 1990s teen comedies, especially when it comes to peppering the soundtrack with what many might assume are anachronistic tunes from the decade in question.  This is all done on purpose, though, as Robinson wants audiences to be reminded of the type of teen comedies that littered the landscape twenty-plus years ago, but she also blends that into a story and style that's still thanklessly unique in its own right.  I've read some comparing DO REVENGE to SCREAM, which is fitting.  SCREAM paid hero worship towards and skewered elements of the slasher film, whereas DO REVENGE does essentially the same with 90s high school comedies.  Hell, it even has BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER herself in Sarah Michelle Gellar (who also appeared in the memorable 90s film CRUEL INTENTIONS) appearing her as Rosehill's headmistress.  A little on the nose in terms of referencing?  Sure.  Cool to see?  For sure. 

Of course, then there are the STRANGERS ON A TRAIN comparisons on display.  Hitchcock's film concerned a killer enticing a stranger to swap murders with him, and DO REVENGE essentially appropriates that, granted without the murderous and criminal intent.  But like Hitchcock's thriller, Drea and Eleanor swap revenge missions so that no bread crumb-like clues will tip off anyone that they were the actual perpetrators.  Added on to this is the manner that Robinson infuses some strong satirical elements into the narrative, like how Max - being an absolutely loathsome heel of the highest order - hides his true colors by founding Rosehill's (not making this up) "Cis Hetero Men Championing Female Identifying Students League" that makes its platform of supporting women and fostering partnership with them a top priority.  Not only is this predictably a total shame, but Max uses his false woke stature and his new club to score with babes and not get labeled as a predator.  Austin Abrams is very well cast as this conniving twerp of a young man that uses the veil feminism (and his phony identification with the movement) to get whatever he wants.  Max is such an awful human being in DO REVENGE that it makes viewers develop a rooting interest in Drea (who isn't squeaky clean either, mind you) making this guy's life a living hell moving forward. 

Obviously, DO REVENGE is dominated by the superb casting tandem of Mendes and Hawke, who really sink their teeth into their mischievous teens and somehow manage to make them both fairly fleshed out and relatable even when the screenplay initially sets them up as routine stock character types.  Hawke (so good in Netflix's STRANGER THINGS and such an vocal dead ringer for her mother in Uma) brings a considerable amount of humorous pathos to Eleanor, especially considering that she has the tougher assignment of the pair in terms on adopting a persona that she's not wholly comfortable with throughout the film.  Mendes has perhaps a trickier performance challenge in the sense that Drea is - on paper - a pretty bad person in her own right who's the type of high school drama queen that's hard to empathize with - sickeningly rich, gorgeous, and with a throw caution to the wind attitude towards hurting the feelings of those around her.  Still, Mendes does a decent job of giving Drea some hidden - and deeply guarded - layers of vulnerability (and, to be fair, her sex tape leak is something that would be mortifying to any non-consenting woman).  Drea takes to her wicked scheme with a ravenous exuberance, and she's not so one-sidedly mean that she can't come to accept some of the ethical problems contained within as she more deeply entrenches herself into it.  Seeing this aggressive mean girl eventually develop a conscience is organically handled largely thanks to Mendes' commitment to the role. 

One other thing (before I get into my quibbles): DO REVENGE looks really good as well, and maybe better than most high school comedies have any business in being.  Everything is done with sun-drenched and vibrant pastels, from the cinematography to the production design and right down to the costumes that these rich manipulators sport.  It's rare that I would say that a genre effort like this has a vision, but this one definitely does.  There are elements, though, that hold Robinson's film back from achieving an upper echelon genre level, like, as alluded to earlier, it being maybe 20-plus minutes longer than it should be (comedies require lean momentum, and this one starts to wane as it careens well over the 90 minute mark).  Also, some logical loopholes distractingly show up, like how (outside of Gellar's headmistress) there are so very few adults in this world (you'd almost think that the microcosm of DO REVENGE was only populated by teens, or actors in the their twenties playing teens).  Some of the dialogue is a snarky delight and riddled with pop culture references, but some feel like the product of older adult writers versus something a Gen Z would actually say (how many of them would make "topical" references to films the average 17-18 year old has probably never heard of or have seen?).  Then there's a plot twist late in the film that can most likely be predicted well in advance to anyone that was wide awake while watching the film.  DO ANYTHING is, for the most part, a smart comedy that sometimes thinks its smarter than its audience, creating a whiplash effect.