Mox­ie

You would not be amiss for think­ing Mox­ie is a hor­ror film from its open­ing sequence. It turns out Vivian (Hadley Robin­son) run­ning through dark wood­land unable to scream for help was a just night­mare. In fact, the film makes a case for a new type of hor­ror: one that unearths the ter­ri­fy­ing real­i­ty of being a young woman in a tox­ic high school environment.

Adapt­ed from Jen­nifer Mathieu’s 2017 young adult nov­el of the same name, Mox­ie is a for­mu­la­ic teen dra­ma that, giv­en Amy Poehler’s involve­ment as direc­tor, is dis­ap­point­ing­ly unfun­ny. ​“It’s so nice not to be on anyone’s radar,” Vivian declares, float­ing anony­mous­ly through cor­ri­dors beside her child­hood bestie Clau­dia (Lau­ren Tsai). This invis­i­bil­i­ty becomes her secret weapon when, inspired by the rev­o­lu­tion­ary lyrics of Biki­ni Kill’s ​‘Rebel Girl,’ her mother’s (Amy Poehler) past activism, and the frank­ness of new stu­dent Lucy (Aly­cia Pas­cual-Peña), Vivan begins design­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing a fem­i­nist zine (designed by artist Nina Charuza) to her school peers incognito.

The zine kick­starts a rev­o­lu­tion that sees the stu­dents unite in protest of the school’s dress code and rebel against their inef­fec­tu­al prin­ci­pal. Telling­ly, how­ev­er, it is the Black, dis­abled and trans women who do the ground­work; report­ing on the insid­i­ous actions of their male peers. Vivian takes these expe­ri­ences as her own to reshape, morph and col­lage for the zine. It is a mis­judge­ment that the film nev­er calls into ques­tion this pur­loined own­er­ship in its explo­ration of ally­ship and young womanhood.

Fuelled by her new­found pas­sion and frus­tra­tion at the slow pace of change, a fire is ignit­ed in Vivian. The flames end up burn­ing those clos­est to her, includ­ing Clau­dia who is cau­tious not to endan­ger all that her immi­grant par­ents sac­ri­ficed for her. In attempt­ing to nav­i­gate Vivian’s posi­tion of white priv­i­lege, Mox­ie does lit­tle more than to sim­ply point it out. The film is a spring­board for some mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions but fails to take the nec­es­sary steps to ful­ly address these issues.

Moxie’s female cast, mean­while, inhab­it their roles with con­vic­tion. In one scene, as their harassers are applaud­ed, the cam­era flick­ers between their faces, cap­tur­ing their vis­i­ble dev­as­ta­tion and ris­ing deter­mi­na­tion in a sin­gle moment. Poehler, along with screen­writ­ers Tama­ra Chest­na and Dylan Mey­er, plots a like­able but flawed high school dra­ma, one all-too aware of today’s social­ly-con­scious, post-#MeToo youth movement.

Despite its per­son­al and per­ti­nent nar­ra­tive, Mox­ie fails to con­front its core ideas of priv­i­lege and ally­ship. The film is so overt in its aims, it los­es authen­tic­i­ty. In attempt­ing to posi­tion itself along­side recent com­ing-of-age crowd-pleasers Eighth Grade, Lady Bird and Books­mart, Poehler’s film ulti­mate­ly strug­gles to find its own voice.