Review: The DUFF (2015)

Does anyone else miss the days of teen rom-coms overrunning the local theatres – before the days of superhero mania and reboot hysteria the cinemas were filled with She’s all That’s, the 10 things I hate about you’s and other generic geek girl/boy takes off glasses to reveal all the hotness underneath and happens to get the cool/hot/popular guy/girl to fall in love with them.  Well these were the days when I first started loving cinema, on Friday afternoons after school we would get the number 4 bus (approximately 90 minutes apart!!) to the local theatre and watch one of these gems!  This is why I was so excited about The DUFF because it reminded me so much of those visits to the big screen.

 Do I really need to explain the sorry?! Geek chic (we’ve improved from plain old geek back in the 90’s) Bianca (Mae Whitman) has known her neighbour and resident popular guy Wes (Robbie Amell) her whole life and he is the one who happens to inform her that she is a DUFF – designated ugly fat friend (how considerate I know!).  This is the friend that guys can approach to ask about their hot friends because they are ugly and fat (although the definition used in the movie implies that the person isn’t necessarily ugly or fat but just less hot that their friends!!).  You can pretty much guess the rest, Bianca proceeds to realise the truth and argue with her friends and try to eliminate her DUFF status with various approaches (one involving humping a store mannequin) only to find that her true love was right under her nose.

Now, you may have noticed a bit of sarcasm in my synopsis (if I didn’t make it obvious enough!) but I actually really enjoyed this movie.  Whitman is a fantastic actress and works well with the limited script offered to her and manages to steal every scene that she was in.  The film did have its ridiculous moments, the mall montage being the worst offender and I almost turned it off at that point because I was actually getting annoyed.  However, I stuck it out and enjoyed the rest of it enough, maybe not enough to ever watch it again but it was comical in places (the fake porn scene had me crying with laughter) and kept my attention.

 
The supporting cast were pretty rubbish and Bianca's mom (Allison Janney) was MASSIVELY under-utilised, her talents are endless and her lines weren’t even funny from her – which is saying something.  The friends only seemed to be included to make the story viable (a DUFF can’t be a DUFF if she has no friends!) but you can’t understand why she would ever be friends with these girls who she has nothing in common with but I may be overthinking the concept a bit too much.  Amell however surprised me, I have always found him irritating not the best actor but he seems to have improved since his last outing in The Flash and managed to hold a lead role well – and he wasn’t too bad to look at!

It was exactly what I expected, therefore I wasn’t disappointed – which I would say is a win