‘Moxie’ is filled with its namesake
Netflix teen dramedy takes on harassment with spunky spirit
Sometimes, all that matters is that a movie gets to where it was going.
Take “Moxie,” for example. The new Netflix teen dramedy from actor-director and Burlington native Amy Poehler — about a shy girl who anonymously starts a mostly female-powered social revolution at her high school — threatens to fall apart late in the second act. Ultimately, though, Poehler shepherds the film from Point A, the film’s strong setup, to Point B, its emotionally satisfying conclusion.
That ham-fisted storytelling that threatened to derail the otherwise highly enjoyable work? Water under the proverbial bridge.
Based on Jennifer Mathieu’s 2017 young-adult novel of the same name, “Moxie” centers around 16year-old Vivian (Hadley Robinson). She’s smart and has a likewise intelligent BFF in Claudia (Lauren Tsai).
While they both dream of going off to college together at the University of California, Berkeley, Claudia is more caught up in school gossip. On the first day of their junior year, Claudia is consumed with what girls will land where on the school’s alpha males’ obnoxious annual list relating to their female classmates’ superficial qualities.
That said, Vivian basically goes through school life excusing the often-gross behavior of the guys — most notably Mitchell (Patrick Schwarzenegger), captain of the football team.
Enter transfer student Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Peña), who’s not the least bit willing to excuse such behavior and becomes a target of Mitchell. (She even inspires a new terrible category when the aforementioned list hits social media.)
“If you keep your head down,” Vivian tells Lucy, “he’ll move on and bother somebody else.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Lucy says, “but I’m going to keep my head up — high.”
This helps to stir something in Vivian, as does a window into the protestfilled past of her single mom, Lisa (Poehler), who now lives a simple life and enjoys that a co-worker (Clark Gregg) has taken an interest in her.
Vivian, too, has an admirer, in the kind, skateboarding Seth (a really likable Nico Hiraga), who has outgrown his old “Seth the Shrimp” nickname. Their eventual, spontaneous first date of sorts is cute in a pleasantly offbeat way.
However, Vivian becomes most focused on Moxie, a zine she anonymously creates and distributes in the school. With some artistic flair, she aims to inspire the young women around her and to call out the young men who deserve it.
Lucy, for one, loves it, and soon she, Vivian and other girls are talking about con
tent in Moxie and its suggestions for displays of solidarity, such as drawing hearts and stars on your hands. (Seth does it, too, earning big points with Vivian.)
For Vivian, this new passion comes at the cost of a weakening of her friendship with Claudia, who wants to keep flying under the radar, especially because her mother is very demanding of her.
If there’s a female villain in “Moxie,” however, it’s Shelly (Marcia Gay Harden), the school principal. She is more than willing to turn a blind eye to bad male behavior in her school, especially when it involves Mitchell. Early on in the film, she not so elegantly moves Lucy off her use of the word “harassment” when she complains to her about the jock.
“Moxie” stumbles a bit when the stakes of keeping Moxie going are raised for Vivian, and she lashes out at Seth and, more ferociously, at her mother. That a teenage girl would treat her mother unfairly certainly is believable, but Poehler and writers Tamara Chestna and Dylan Meyer do not lay enough groundwork for it.
And a subplot involving the Moxie crew trying to steer an athletic scholarship away from Mitchell at the last minute aand to one of their own feels half-baked.
Most disappointingly, despite a significant amount of screentime for Pascual-Peña, Lucy is an underdeveloped
character. She’s so crucial to Vivian’s arc, and the AfroLatina actress is so good in the movie, that we’re left wanting to know more about the character.
Ultimately, though, this movie is about Vivian, and Robinson (“Little Women,” “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”) is well-cast. Thanks in part to her, Vivian is easy to root for — even when we know she’s making a mistake that will cost her.
By the way, yes, Schwarzenegger (“Echo Boomers”) is the son of Arnold, and yes, he’s successful at playing this guy you come to loathe — that is if you don’t from the moment you meet him. This is the second directorial effort for “Saturday Night Live” and “Parks and Recreation” alum Poehler, following 2019’s “Wine Country,” which received mixed reviews. Although “Moxie” feels a little rough around the edges, Poehler nails the film’s crucial climactic sequence, which goes a long way toward smoothing over those edges.
Be warned that after addressing what a high-school principal may not want to see as harassment, “Moxie” swims, appropriately, into heavier waters. That only helps its ending to resonate with the viewer.
It may have a few flaws, but this movie has that certain … what’s the word? … spirit that makes it worth seeing.