BARELY LETHAL
By: John ‘Doc’ Strange
Directed by: Kyle Newman
Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Alba, Sophie Turner, Dove Cameron, Thomas Mann
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sexual material, teen drinking, language, drug references and some action violence)
Selig Rating: MATINEE
Runtime: 100 Min.
Imagine if you will a school where young girls are raised to be killing machines. A school run by a hard case named Hardman (Samuel L. Jackson) who sees that the girls learn everything from multiple languages to the best way to assault a building. A school where most of the girls have adjusted to the training and work very hard to be the best little killers they can be.
What if one of the girls, say #83, decided that what she wanted more than anything in the world is just to have a normal life. She doesn’t want to be a rock star or an actress, just a regular teenaged girl going to high school and dealing with teachers and her fellow students.
While on a mission to capture an arms dealer named Victoria Knox (Jessica Alba), 83 has a close brush with death. She escapes that death by cutting the rope which connects her (and the arms dealer) to the recovery plane and plunges into a river. Upon pulling herself from the water, 83 (Hailee Steinfeld) realizes that this is her chance to escape and live a normal life. All she has to do is not respond to Hardman’s attempts to reach her by radio and disappear into the woods.
Using her training, 83 picks a name for herself (Megan Walsh) and a back story (orphaned and raised by a foster family in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada). She then picks a family in the student exchange program to live with.
Arriving in Newton she finds the Larson family isn’t exactly what she expected. The couple is divorced for starters. Mrs. Larson (Rachael Harris) is happy to invite her into their home. The son, Parker (Jason Ian Drucker) thinks he is a ninja in training. Parker’s sister, Liz (Dove Cameron), doesn’t trust her and doesn’t want her around to mess up her senior year.
On her first day in high school, Megan meets a young man who she decides is the AV Geek backstage prior to the opening day school assembly. She then gets trotted out in front of the school where she is regaled with shouts of ridicule over her origins until the local musical hero (his band was #24 on the iTunes download list last March) arrives on stage to rescue her. Her first day in biology finds her sitting with the AV Geek, Roger Marcus (Thomas Mann), trading puns as they get to know each other.
Sadly for Roger, Megan sets her sights on the musician, Cash Fenton (Toby Sebastian). This leaves poor Roger hanging, interested but ignored as anything but, dare I say it, a friend.
Megan goes through her days trying to follow the mission plan she has taped inside the armoire in her room. Her only insights into the minds of the kids and adults around her are what she learned from binge watching films during her planning following the escape.
Too many of her ideas about how things are supposed to work are from these movies. They are at least 10 years old (some are older). Like the clothing she wore on the first day of school she is constantly learning the differences and putting the changes into place in her plan. But every plan has its flaws. For Megan, her greatest flaw is that she is nice. This leads her to listen to two girls who want to keep her away from Cash. She and tries out and becomes the school mascot. (It is sad that the faculty advisor totally ignored her routine. Using her martial arts background she totally nailed the use of the battle axe and her gymnastic moves were excellent.)
Even sadder is that the video of her beating the crap out of the opposing school’s students, students who just wanted to follow traditions and kidnap her while she is wearing the mascot outfit. This video leads not only Hardman to her but Victoria Knox as well. It seems the arms deaer escaped from the Prescott school facility where Hardman and his team had been questioning her. She took out several members of the Prescott force during the breakout.
First to show up is neither of these people but #84 (Sophie Turner), Megan’s rival. 84, or Heather as she asks to be called, shows up at Megan’s first party, a kegger at another student’s house. Megan goes to the party accompanied by Liz who was not sure she wanted to go but is forced to by her mother.
At the party, Liz hooks up with Gooch (now to be called by his real name, Bernard). She and Bernard (Gabriel Basso) share his flask of tequila and get wasted while becoming close, all the while sitting in a bath tub. At the end of the party, Megan is forced to decide whether to leave Liz passed out on the sofa and go with Cash to breakfast or taking Liz home to safety.
Hormones win out and Megan leaves Liz to sleep off the alcohol while she goes to eat with Cash and his friends. As a result, Liz arrives home at 6 AM the next morning with a drawing done in sharpie on her cheek. Mrs. Larson lectures Megan about leaving Liz alone when she knew better.
The girls are starting to bond. Surviving an assassination attempt by an unknown party in a black car accelerates the process.
The action sequences begin to come faster as the girls attend the homecoming dance on a double date (escorted by Cash and Bernard). Heather shows up escorted by Roger which really gets Megan going as she tries to decide who her heart really wants. Not surprising, a fight breaks out between the two agents. From the defeated Heather, Megan finds out Victoria has plans for the Larsons. Megan and Liz race home to save Liz’s mother and brother.
The fight as well as the banter between Victoria and Megan is pretty well scripted. The rest of the final sequences are good but to be expected in a film like this. That said, I liked the way the writer closed out the story. The fights are not over done and the feel of the film is positive.
I recommend this film to families with younger girls. The lessons that are slipped in will be well received by them and the parents will be entertained as well. I expect this to do okay in the theaters and then really go strong in the VOD and rental market where the girls can watch it more than once.
Movie Site: http://barelylethal.com/
The Selig Rating Scale:
FULL PRICE – Excellent movie, well worth the price
MATINEE – Good movie
DOLLAR – OK movie
CABLE – No need to rush. Save it for a rainy day.
FREEBIE – Good that I saw it on the big screen but wish I hadn't paid for it.
COMMERCIAL TV – Commercials and cutting to the allotted time will not hurt this one.
FORGET IT! – Bad. If you see this one, do yourself a favor and keep it to yourself.
GET YOUR TORCHES – BAD! – Burn the script, the writer, the director and maybe even the actors!
