Rated PG-13
Starring Mae Whitman, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Bianca Santos, Skyler Samuels, Nick Eversman, Ken Jeong, Romany Malco,
Directed by Ari Sandel
The Story:
Bianca (Whitman) is entering her senior year and she gets stuck with writing the article of what homecoming means to her by Mr. Arthur (Jeong). Naturally, Bianca is that one girl that has no interest in homecoming or the assignment. She does however, have a major crush on Toby (Eversman) and would do anything to get to know him. Enter her obnoxious jock "friend", Wesley (Amell) who is going to teach her how to stop being the DUFF and start being herself.
Okay, I suppose I owe the explanation of the acronym DUFF:
Designated Ugly Fat Friend.
:)
Once Bianca learns that she is the DUFF of her two best friends (Santos & Samuels) needless to say, she's not too happy.
And when the evil queen of the school (Thorne) tries to stop Bianca from being friendly with Wesley, the claws really come out.
So what do you think, sound familiar?
Taking equal parts of Whatever It Takes, She's All That, Mean Girls and countless other high school ugly duckling/beautiful swan movies, The DUFF adds to the catalog with another winner.
Because face it, when these are done well, they are a lot of fun and add another time capsule of "life in high school" to a long list of cinematic cult favorites.
It's a genre I enjoy watching, and normally they are fun to share with the kids.
This is where I pull out my soapbox and mention that this film uses a bit more language and innuendo than I would have preferred in a PG-13 film, so it gets knocked down because of it.
I still think it's a lazy screenwriter trap to be explicit, but the world is full of potty mouths, so what can you do?
I would have liked to add this to favorite films of the year, but I'm taking it down a notch for the language.
Still a pretty funny movie though.
Final Grade: B
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