Moxie is a superior film to Poehler’s last effort for Netflix, the instantly forgettable Wine Country. There are some hints at that, especially at the end, but not enough to justify that whole process. And it's a very different feminism than the Riot Grrrl kind-more intersectional, for example. In fact, I'd bet that post-#MeToo, high school students are considerably more attuned to feminism than those of 10 or 20 years ago.
The other issue is that it's not like high school girls these days haven't heard of feminism. Knowing what I do about public high schools these days, they're much more likely to be overzealous when it comes to dealing with bullying and harassment, as opposed to ignoring them.Īnd while it's not like zines are completely dead-some colleagues of mine in Philadelphia make a very good one about film, called Moviejawn-you'd think such underground, clandestine high school efforts would be more online, rather than using a method that requires paper and copy machines. The movie’s set in Oregon, where the Riot Grrrl movement got its start, and not in an especially conservative part of the country. So Vivian and her friends, inspired by the Poehler character's youthful experiences, strike back against the school's patriarchy, with Vivian anonymously producing the titular throwback zine. They also do stuff, straight out of viral news stories, like forcing a buxom, tank top-clad student to cover up. The administration, in the person of principal (Marcia Gay Harden) turns a blind eye.
In her high school, sexist bullying and harassment run rampant, mostly led by jock Mitchell (Patrick Schwarzenegger, Arnold’s son.)
Hadley Robinson stars as Vivian, a high school student whose single mom is played by Poehler.
The movie also has fun with music, tossing in a punk cover of "Suddenly Seymour" from Little Shop of Horrors, which takes the recent cinematic renaissance of the work of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman in an unexpected direction. It's an intriguing premise, brought to life by a talented cast, and while there have been numerous comparisons to Mean Girls-since Poehler played a mom in that movie, and her longtime colleague Tina Fey wrote it-the vibe, style and goals of Moxie are completely different. That includes everything from a zine (the "Moxie!" of the title) to a band that plays Bikini Kill covers to a feminist awakening. Not only does its present-day heroine develop an appreciation for the music of Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, but she and friends also embrace the political and cultural worldview of the Riot Grrrl movement, circa 1992. Moxie, the new Netflix movie directed by Amy Poehler and adapted from Jennifer Mathieu's young adult novel, takes that trope further. This is why Wayne and Garth loved Led Zeppelin instead of Nirvana. There's a long and annoying tradition of fortysomething directors of teen movies giving their characters an unexplained and anachronistic love of the music the director liked when they were teenagers.