![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
F/F Friday: D.E.B.S.
May. 10th, 2019 09:06 amSomeone described D.E.B.S. to me as a “lesbian spy story,” so I was really looking forward to it, and consequently was quite disappointed when I realized that it’s a love story lightly accoutered in spy trappings rather than a spy story that also had some romance.
To be clear, the problem is the mismatch between my expectations (and preferences for spy love stories) rather than a failure on D.E.B.S.’ part: D.E.B.S. is exactly the movie it wants to be, and keeps its tongue firmly in cheek. When supervillian Lucy Diamond robs a bank to lure in her crush, Amy, the only D.E.B. to ever receive a perfect score on the spy test secretly embedded in the SAT (just roll with it), the money comes in bags marked with great big dollar signs, like something out of the cartoon.
I felt strongly that if Amy aced the test, then the test must be calibrated incorrectly, because Amy shows no aptitude for spywork: look at the scene where she leads her entire team into a vault without so much as leaving someone to watch the door, even though (or probably because) her teammate Max tells her the vault looks like a trap. However, this is taking the movie more seriously than it means to be taken.
It also disappointed me that there’s no real sense of friendship between Amy and her fellow D.E.B.S. We’re told that Amy and Max are best friends, but when you compare their friendship to the relationship between Lucy Diamond and her 100% ride-or-die sidekick Scud, the comparative weakness of Amy & Max’s connection becomes obvious. We never see them have fun together or support each other or really do much together except snipe.
Basically my feeling was that the D.E.B.S. in general and Amy’s three D.E.B. friends in particular were set up as mostly an obstacle to Amy’s romance, and the movie would have had so much more emotional depth if Amy cared about any of those things in their own right and truly had mixed feelings about abandoning her elite spy career or betraying her country for a criminal or even just leaving her friends behind. Just because it’s silly doesn’t mean it has to be complete marshmallow fluff.
To be clear, the problem is the mismatch between my expectations (and preferences for spy love stories) rather than a failure on D.E.B.S.’ part: D.E.B.S. is exactly the movie it wants to be, and keeps its tongue firmly in cheek. When supervillian Lucy Diamond robs a bank to lure in her crush, Amy, the only D.E.B. to ever receive a perfect score on the spy test secretly embedded in the SAT (just roll with it), the money comes in bags marked with great big dollar signs, like something out of the cartoon.
I felt strongly that if Amy aced the test, then the test must be calibrated incorrectly, because Amy shows no aptitude for spywork: look at the scene where she leads her entire team into a vault without so much as leaving someone to watch the door, even though (or probably because) her teammate Max tells her the vault looks like a trap. However, this is taking the movie more seriously than it means to be taken.
It also disappointed me that there’s no real sense of friendship between Amy and her fellow D.E.B.S. We’re told that Amy and Max are best friends, but when you compare their friendship to the relationship between Lucy Diamond and her 100% ride-or-die sidekick Scud, the comparative weakness of Amy & Max’s connection becomes obvious. We never see them have fun together or support each other or really do much together except snipe.
Basically my feeling was that the D.E.B.S. in general and Amy’s three D.E.B. friends in particular were set up as mostly an obstacle to Amy’s romance, and the movie would have had so much more emotional depth if Amy cared about any of those things in their own right and truly had mixed feelings about abandoning her elite spy career or betraying her country for a criminal or even just leaving her friends behind. Just because it’s silly doesn’t mean it has to be complete marshmallow fluff.
