BEFORE: Jaime King carries over from "Bulletproof Monk". She's just in the first few seconds of this film, but that's OK, that counts. I know that Samuel L. Jackson plays the head of a spy agency in this one - geez, did he get typecast or what? I've got some time this weekend so I think I'm going to start watching "Secret Invasion", in which he plays the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., the spy agency in the Marvel Universe. It's the same damn character, right?
THE PLOT: A teenage special ops agent coveting a "normal" adolescence fakes her own death and enrolls in a suburban high school. She quickly learns that surviving the treacherous waters of school is more challenging than international espionage.
AFTER: Yeah, it's another female assassin-based movie - now I'm starting to think that this is some Hollywood executive's sick fetish or something. "Domino", "Kate", "The Rhythm Section, "Hanna", "Ava" and "The 355". I think at least one place that women have achieved gender equality is in spy or assassin movies - I'm not sure if they've achieved this in the real-life spy game. Also, do female assassins get paid less than male ones? Something we should look into, maybe.
Who trains little girls to drive cars and deactivate explosives, though? Just asking - oh I guess that's what Samuel L. Jackson's character, Hardman, is all about. He's a "hard man", get it? I'm hoping that symbolically refers to his demeanor and training regimens, not something else. As I said, I think this film counts as some kind of porn for a certain kind of person, who digs watching women fight each other and shoot guns and drive during car chases. Hey, whatever floats your boat, I suppose. Maybe you can trace all of this back to "Charlie's Angels" in the 1970's.
But even though the Prescott Academy took in these orphaned (?) girls very young, a few of them can't help but wonder what a "normal" life would be like. Sure, all they know is living at the academy and training with weapons and martial arts, but Agent 83 has managed to get hold of some teen magazines, and on her last assignment she tracked down some DVDs of famous teen movies set in high school, so that's the life that she wants to experience, at least for a while. So after battling an arms dealer (who turns out to be a former graduate of Prescott herself), 83 jumps from her helicopter pick-up and just doesn't report in, leading Hardman to consider her a casualty in the field. (There's no later report of a mysterious body found, so sooner or later he's going to figure out she's gone AWOL.)
Agent 83 poses an exchange student from Canada, and tries to figure out the dynamic of a high school, which is no easy feat if you've never been to a public school before. Sometimes she's a little TOO cautious, because she naturally assumes that the cheerleaders are going to prank her when they invite her to sit with them at lunch. Maybe they were just trying to be nice - but I'm with 83, you can't trust cheerleaders. "Megan" also falls for a trick from two girls who also like Cash, the most popular boy in school, and they tell her she can get his attention by trying out to be the school mascot. She's got the moves, thanks to her martial arts training - but it's weird that the pep squad coach picks her because she's the only one who wants the job, and doesn't even pay attention when she makes her choice. (It's a weird joke that goes nowhere...)
Once the rival high school's pep squad tries to "kidnap" Newton High's mascot, Megan's training kicks in and she fights them off with her rubber mascot axe and a handy trombone borrowed from the band. A video of her defending herself gets posted and goes viral, which is a good thing because she's suddenly popular at school, but a bad thing because Hardman sees the video and then real secret agents move in to abduct her for real, and Hardman assumes she's now a double agent, and demands to know who else she's working for. He can't even fathom that someone would long for a normal life instead of the assassin path that they've been placed on...
Then there are the harder social skills Megan has to learn, like party etiquette, and getting a date for homecoming. NITPICK POINT: Megan is supposedly aware of all the standard high-school movie clichés, because she's watched "Mean Girls" and "Ten Things I Hate About You" and other films. So why isn't she aware at first about the classic love triangle, where the girl falls for the hot dumb guy who's in a band and nearly ignores the smart, sensitive guy that she's placed in the friend zone?
Well, at least she ends up with the right guy - and she forms a friendship with the high-school girl in the family she's staying with. NITPICK POINT #2: I participated in an exchange program in high-school, I went to Germany during break and I think it lasted two weeks. Do other exchange programs last longer? I'm not sure, but the one here seems very open-ended, just because Megan wants to experience all of senior year. Wouldn't somebody say, "Don't you need to go back to Canada at some point?" I mean, homecoming takes place in late October, right? That's two months since the start of the school year.
This film must have really underperformed at the box office, because it left itself open for a sequel, and then one never came. Eight years later, still no word. Yep, IMDB confirms, the budget for the film was $15 million and it made back less than $1 million. Ouch. I didn't think it was THAT bad.
Also starring Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "Term Life"), Sophie Turner (last seen in "Time Freak"), Jessica Alba (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "A Shock to the System"), Dove Cameron (last seen in "Dumplin'"), Thomas Mann (last seen in "The Land of Steady Habits"), Rob Huebel (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Toby Sebastian, Gabriel Basso (last seen in "The Whole Truth"), Rachael Harris (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Jason Drucker, Alexandra Krosney, Emma Holzer (last seen in "Spring Breakers"), Dan Fogler (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Finesse Mitchell (last seen in "The Comebacks"), Christopher Nathan Miller (last seen in "The Spectacular Now"), Steve-O (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Bruno Gunn (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), Autumn Dial, Tarek Bishara (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Lo Bishop, Annie Park, Kathrine Herzer, Kate Kneeland (last seen in "Lady and the Tramp"), Cameron Fuller (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Nina Dobrev (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Daniel Spink (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Madeleine Stack, Eva G. Cooper
RATING: 6 out of 10 tequila shots while sitting in a bathtub
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