Moxie Movie Review

TW: Mentions rape and emotional abuse

Now, I wanna start this off by saying I am not a movie critic. I am not a professional in any meaning of the word when it comes to criticizing movies. This is simply just my opinion as a regular moviegoer. I wanted to create a conversation about the movies that we watch, hence this entire blog post. Also, spoiler alert! I will be talking about the movie in detail, so if you don’t want anything spoiled now is your chance to turn back. So without any further ado, here we go!

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t necessarily attracted to the movie Moxie when it first came out. I found myself avoiding it in my recommended section. Something about another white girl speaking on how hard high school was for her didn’t really sit right with me. Little did I know there was much more to this story than just the movie poster. The story—based of of Jennifer Mathieu’s book—centers around a young Vivian (played by Hadley Robinson) going through her last year of high school in a suburban neighborhood in America. Her goal is to lay low and finish out the year in preparation for college. Sexism is rampant throughout her school, which is made evident at the beginning of the movie when a list created by a group of boys is released on the first day of school. It ranks the worth of all the girls in the senior year with phrases like “Most Bangable” and “Most Obedient”. She becomes inspired by her mom‘s past of standing up against the patriarchy and the new student in her class to take action against the list. Vivian anonymously creates a zine, making a list of her own to call out the most sexist boys in her year and leaves them throughout the girls' bathrooms. Everything only gets more interesting from here.

The movie is littered with teachers and friends slowly joining in support of the movement. They write stars in Sharpie on their hands and arms to show solidarity. The group goes from calling out sexism, to advocating for women in power, to exposing a rapist on campus. At the end of the movie, Vivian feels like she had finally found her voice.

While watching the movie, I was able to enjoy rock songs from Bikini Kill of which I hadn’t listened to in a long time. My son and I had a good time thrashing around the living room and jumping up and down while the guitar ripped in the air. By the end of the movie, I found myself utterly inspired and amped up to take down the patriarchy. It was funny, exciting, and gives our villian a satisfactory slap-to-the-face with reality. That was personally my favorite part.

Another aspect I thoroughly enjoyed was the demonstration of what a good relationship looks like. In high school, I had no help with relationships. The most that I ever got was “If he hits you, we’ll take care of him for you,” which was only a semi-comforting thought. All the lessons I got as a teenager failed to recognize emotionally abusive red flags and consent. This movie does an exceptional job of displaying what consent looks like, how someone in a relationship should treat you, and when to set boundaries in said relationship. As someone who never got this talk, I can only wish that I could show my teenage self this movie.

In addition, I felt that Moxie did a good job of showing how hard it is to be a part of this movement as a first generation child. Claudia (the long-time best friend of Vivian, played be Lauren Tsai) is the first gen child of Chinese immigrants. She wants to be a part of the Moxie movement at school, but is torn between her friends and her parents expectations. She is criticized by Vivian for not showing enough support for the movement. For the majority of the movie, she supports from the sidelines until she boldly puts her name down to make Moxie an official club at school. Unfortunately, because the group places stickers with some… not so nice words written on them, Claudia takes the fall and is faced with suspension and serious reprocussions from her parents.

As a first gen myself, I found this particular point in the plot to be very relatable. Only in my senior year did I feel brave enough to attend ONE walk-out in support of gun control. ONE. And it was something I made sure my parents never found out about because I was afraid of their dissapointment. You are taught to never deviate from the mainstream, to assimilate the best you can so you can be considered “American”. You are taught that you need to not only fit in, but out-perform everyone else because there is no choice but for you to succeed. I felt heard and validated during these scenes—that even though I might not be able to be participate like everyone else, I was seen.

While it does these things right, Moxie is not without its flaws. The scene at the very beginning where our heroine runs through a forest, unable to scream, seemed misplaced in a storyline where it simply had nothing to do with the actual story. It wasn’t until the end where the same dream played, but with Vivian able to finally scream at the top of her lungs that I was able to interpret it as “her voice was lost but now she’s found it“. I felt like it didn’t have to be in there, but I appreciated where it was trying to go.

Something else I found hard to appreciate was the LGBT+ representation and how it was presented. As someone who is close with the community, I was happy to see they included representation that some teens might relate to; however, when there was very little context to the relationship and no follow-through, I found it to have a “last minute” type of feel. The same can be felt about part of the POC representation. Though the cast was very diverse and had many different backgrounds involved, I was still a little off-put that Lucy (the new student played by Alycia Pascual) wasn’t given more context. We found out mid-movie that she was from California. I had no idea that she was Latina until she started speaking Spanish at the end of the movie. Again, it felt like a “last-minute” decision. Because it seems so last minute, whatever intention there was for inclusion felt like an obligatory nod towards these communities and not the bringing together that it was meant to be.

Then there is the glaringly obvious problem—our heroine is another white girl. There are so many movies with a white protagonist, it seems to get lost in the array. Yes, she starts a movement, but she only takes credit for it after her friend is suspended and after the group gets so large, it’s basically untouchable by school authorities. Yes, she finally begins the school-wide conversation about sexism, but it’s only after someone else gives her the idea to do it. She’s problematic in her relationship and lashes out at her supportive partner. She is a character with a lot of flaws and she’s not particularly outstanding.

My last grievence about this movie is its demonstration of how productive the movement was at their school.

While at the end of the movie, we see the beginnings of change, but nothing that feels satisfactory or concrete. The villian, Mitchell (played by Patrick Schwarzenegger), is revealed to be a rapist and is finally called into the principle’s office. After the entire movie where he is seen being a sexist tyrant, we get one zoom in of his face and it cuts back to the girls lending their support for the victim and one another. While I’m personally glad that he finally got in trouble for something, it sucked that there was no follow-through. For all we know, there might not have been any charges filed. He may get off with a slap on the wrist. We never find out.

But after dwelling on it for a while, I realize that this is the reality.

Many women are not comfortable with coming forward with their experience for so many reasons—fear of backlash, judgement, or the fear that nothing will be done about it. This movie shows that even though there is so much fear and stigma, that there are people who will support you.

Overall, it was a fun watch that danced with some serious topics. I noticed than many real critics stated that this movie was a flop because of how much main character has, but I feel like that was the point of a plot. This story is for the girl with privilege but doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s for the girl who is in a position to stand up to the patriarchy, but never has. In short, this movie is for young girls who live in the suburbs. And it does it’s job! The script feels like they actually spoke to a teen before they released the movie. If I had seen this movie around 16ish, I would’ve liked it a lot! That being said, there are plenty of issues within that didn’t have to be there.

In my book, Moxie gets a 6/10. The intention was there, the execution was not. If you’re 16, you provably wouldn’t be able to tell anyway.