The DUFF

What is a DUFF?

According to this movie, it stands for "Designated Ugly Fat Friend".  However, we also learn that the term can be very broad.  It can pretty much apply to anyone who is friends with anyone else who is much more attractive or popular than they are.  The DUFF is the one whom other people go to in order to get information on their more popular friend, in the hope that they can date that more popular friend.

Our heroine, Bianca (Mae Whitman), is a kind of frumpy high school girl who's never fit in.  She likes zombie movies, is a straight-A student and doesn't get noticed much, not even by the school staff.  Her best friends since childhood have been the much prettier Casey (Biana A. Santos) and Jess (Skyler Samuels).  She is their DUFF.  Bianca learns this from her long time neighbor and dim-witted football jock, Wesley (Robbie Amell), while attending a party.  At first she denies it, but then she looks back over her past, and begins to realize the horrible truth.  Everyone has always looked her over for her more popular best friends.  Heck, even when they were children playing Charlie's Angels, Casey and Jess were always the Angels, while Bianca was always stuck playing Bosley. ("Why did I play Bosley?  There were three Angels!", Bianca realizes.)

The DUFF follows Bianca's attempts to break free of her label, and make a name for herself.  This includes working up the courage to talk to the boy she likes, the sensitive guitar player Toby (Nick Eversman).  Her efforts don't go very well, so she strikes a deal with Wesley the jock - He will help her find her own identity, and she will help him pass Science class so he can stay on the football team.  Will they start out hating each other, but gradually warm up, and even start to like each other to the point that Bianca starts taking Wesley to her secret thinking spot in the woods?  What do you think?  Oh, and of course there's a mean girl for Bianca to deal with.  She's Madison (Bella Thorne), Wesley's ex-girlfriend who is not happy to see him hanging around with a DUFF like Bianca.  She'll resort to cyberbullying in order to crush Bianca's newly found spirit.

This is a well-meaning teen comedy that obviously hopes to join the ranks of recent classics like Mean Girls and Easy A, or perhaps the 1980s efforts from John Hughes.  Unfortunately, much like its main character, the movie has a hard time standing out.  It's not bad in any real way, and Mae Whitman makes for a very likable lead, though at 26 years-old in real life, I hope she graduates to adult roles soon.  It just never finds its own comedic identity, and instead follows lockstep with the cliches of the genre.  There's the scene where Bianca tries on a bunch of different outfits as she tries to find a new wardrobe, there's the scene where Bianca is humiliated in front of the whole school, there's the misunderstanding between Bianca and Wesley that puts their blossoming relationship in danger, and there's naturally the climax at the Homecoming Dance, where Wesley must choose between the popular and catty Madison, or Bianca, who has just started to come out of her shell.  It's not that I don't think these ideas or scenes could work in a movie still, it's just that the screenplay by Josh A. Cagan (based on a Young Adult novel by Kody Keplinger) never finds a unique spin on them.

For the adult characters, the filmmakers have rounded up some strong talent, only to give them little to do.  Ken Jeong plays Bianca's mentor, Mr. Arthur, who wants her to write an article on Homecoming for the school paper.  He appears so infrequently throughout the movie, I actually forgot he was in the film when he reappeared after a long absence.  He's one of the few teachers who actually seems to notice and respect Bianca, and I kept on waiting for them to have a big scene together, but it never really happens.  Allison Janney also turns up as Bianca's mom - a woman who has built her life around being a life improvement coach after her husband left her, and teaches other women how to move on from broken relationships.  She gets a couple funny scenes, but still comes across as unfulfilled.  That has a lot to do with the fact that her own subplot about joining a dating site to find a new love for herself has no closure whatsoever.

The DUFF is a pretty likable movie, but it's not likable enough to cover up the fact that it is light on big laughs.  The cast is fine, and the movie itself never offends, but it's just not enough.  This is disappointing, as the early moments seem to hint at a much sharper comedy to come.  As Bianca explains her life at school and her various relationships, the movie has a certain sweetly offbeat tone that I admired.  But then, little by little, it loses that tone and goes straight into conventional territory.  It starts taking its own plot seriously, when it should be poking fun at it, and giving its lead character a sarcastic and knowing look at what's happening to her.  There are moments like that throughout, but it never comes across as strong as it should.  The movie wants so much for us to see Bianca as a free spirit and an outsider, but she kind of becomes more ordinary as the film goes on.

Should this movie prove successful with young audiences, I hope that Mae Whitman goes on to better things.  She's had a long career since she was a child, but this is probably her first stand-out role on the big screen.  She shows herself to be a likable comedic actress here.  Now she needs a script that can match her big talent.

See related merchandise at Amazon.com!

0 comments