D.E.B.S.

D.B.B.S. is a hard film for me to review. I was in the right mood to watch it, I really enjoyed most of it but there was a huge level of cheesiness that I was always aware of but willing to accept today. On another day though, the cheese and the annoying parts would probably have me turning it off in frustration if not throwing things at the screen.

Let’s start with the bad. Although this was apparently directed by a woman, and in some scenes I could believe that, it felt like she lost the battle with someone and the bulk of the cast were dressed like a man's wet dream. Perhaps it’s just me, but the schoolgirl look doesn’t do anything for me, and lots of women in schoolgirl costumes felt like a fetish party gone wrong. Given the story claims they’re students at a university training in the background to be spies, it doesn’t even fit the plot…

The plot itself is serviceable. I can’t really go further than that. I think it’s meant to be a pastiche of films, and thus series, like Charlie’s Angels, and that throws it back to being a feminist twist on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Then we add a main and a secondary romance into the mix and smatterings of a buddy movie and we have a mashup with problems. It’s trying to do too many things and it doesn’t have the time and space to develop them properly. Fortunately the romance, especially adding in the forbidden element as it’s between a spy in training and a super-villain is just about strong enough to carry the rest of it. That might be my libido talking, young Jordana Brewster was hot, 18 years on she still is according to the picture on her Wikipedia page.

Given how important I felt the romance did I believe it? Not uncritically, but enough. The meet cute between Lucy and Amy worked nicely enough, and the callback at the end as they run away together was nicely done. Amy breaks up with Boring Whitebread (he did have a character name, but I can’t be bothered to look it up) and pretty much the next day falls for Lucy. Impossible? No. But it stretched my credulity. There’s a period when she’s in denial and some of that is really nicely done, I’ve seen that conversation and I’ve seen it be far, far uglier than that too. While we’re talking about this, I just want to say what an enabler Lucy's sidekick Scud is. He’s so invested in getting her a new girlfriend he will do anything for that, and although many of his lines are super cheesy, I found myself warming to him and his actions to support Lucy's quest for love. It helped strengthen the whole romance story as well.

I did have a sinking feeling that we’d have the evil lesbian trope play out, but Lucy reforms for the love of Amy, which is a nice twist.

I must give a shout out to the music. A real nostalgia trip for me, especially The Cure and Erasure. I don’t hear A Little Respect that often any more, but I know what image is going to accompany it for a long time to come. You can too…

YouTube clip of A Little Respect from the flim

This is a film I can’t wholeheartedly recommend. But if you’re in just the right mood for a big cheesy romance (and some other crap) then this is could be just what you need.

Bechdel Test: Pass. There are a load of named, female characters and most of them speak to each other. Some of those conversations are about boys. But a lot are about being spies, friendship, relationships, love, ambition and the like.

KoTest: Pass. Perhaps inevitably one of the core group of D.E.B.S. is a WOC. She easily passes the test. I’m not sure how Jordana identifies, being half Brazilian and half American she might consider herself a WOC too. If so, she’d pass the test.

Russo Test: Pass. The whole point of the film is the queer romance between Lucy and Amy. We don’t get labels but they end up in a wlw relationship.