Film review: The DUFF

Mae Whitman as Bianca and Bella Thorne as Madison in The DUFF. Courtesy Granville Pictures

The DUFF

Starring: Mae Whitman, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Allison Janney

Director: Ari Sandel

Three stars

To one degree or another, all teen comedies owe a debt to John Hughes (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink) and Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless).

The milieu of suburban teenage life that they explored decades ago has defined the genre since. The social divisions, the boredom, the dances, the irrepressible awkwardness and the irrational dreaminess of high school students never before seemed so accessible, and so neatly packaged with a perfect soundtrack – even if their scope was rather limited to a particularly middle-class set of pupils.

It’s no surprise that we continue to tell slightly different variations of the same story. There are still outcasts and bullies and war stories to be told from the halls of suburban high schools and every generation deserves its own silly teenage misfit tales. While it’s neither as biting as Mean Girls nor as sweetly referential as Easy A, the earnest and sometimes amusing The DUFF is a fine addition.

Mae Whitman stars as Bianca, an overalls-wearing overachiever just trying to navigate her senior year alongside her best friends Jess (Skyler Samuels) and Casey (Bianca A Santos).

But their dynamic is not equal, the handsome, popular and sweetly dim-witted American football player Wesley (Robbie Amell) bluntly informs Bianca. She, he explains, is the Designated Ugly Fat Friend (aka “The DUFF”) of the group – the girl who goes unnoticed until someone wants to gain access to her more attractive friends.

This revelation causes Bianca to take off on her own, unfriending her long-time pals (in the only way that contemporary kids might know how – on several social-media sites) and convincing Wesley to help her break out of DUFF prison.

On the face of it, with the popular guy teaching the misfit girl how to fit in, the film sounds like Can’t Buy Me Love (1987) in reverse. Or Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) in reverse. Or even She’s All That (1999) without the bet.

But then the director Ari Sandel takes a modern twist. In Mean Girls, chaos ensues when the queen bee makes hard copies of the secret-filled and reputation-destroying “burn book”. Here, Wesley’s vindictive on-again, off-again girlfriend Madison (Bella Thorne, taking her Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day brat to the next level) presses send to share an embarrassing video.

The act of digital aggression spreads rapidly throughout a school hungry for someone else to laugh at and Bianca becomes even more of a social pariah.

In some ways, The DUFF is an up-to-the-minute and empowering version of the old stories we know all too well. Bianca doesn’t want or need to be popular in the classic sense. She just wants to be treated as her own person.

And while Wesley might help her find more flattering clothes and bras, his main goal isn’t to assimilate, it’s to make Bianca more comfortable in her own skin.

Whitman, who cut her teeth on Arrested Development as the “homely” Ann Veal, stole scenes in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and gained more mainstream recognition on the television show Parenthood, is a star comedienne. Pint-sized and porcelain-skinned, she uses her unabashed physicality and expressive, Elizabeth Taylor-like eyebrows to ultimate effect, even if it takes a stretch of the imagination to accept the fact that this girl might be overlooked or deemed even remotely unattractive in a social setting.

Amell (who you might recognise as Firestorm in the TV superhero drama The Flash), meanwhile, uses his symmetrical good looks well in a difficult role. His easy chemistry with Whitman carries the movie.

With a supporting cast that includes The West Wing’s Allison Janney (who is a bit wasted here), it’s Ken Jeong who stands out. He has created a sort of cottage industry for himself playing twisted characters in already deviant comedies, but tones it down a notch here as the affable, goofy editor of the school newspaper.

While The DUFF struggles to score on the comedy front more often than it succeeds, and is probably not destined to become a Sixteen Candles for a new generation, it is eminently watchable and even a bit touching.

It takes a special kind of movie to nail a revelatory dance scene. On that front, The DUFF and its leads pass with flying colours.