Wait, Is this a Marvel Movie?

Hello out there on the surface world! Slick Dungeon here. I hope everyone had a great Halloween last week and no one got their faces melted by a mask with a shamrock on it. Now that the glorious month of horror is over, I am back to watching any bad movie and reading any bad book out there. For my movie review this week, I watched Barely Lethal.

I kept hearing about this movie, people telling me how bad it was and that I definitely needed to watch it. I stayed away from it for a long because, well, that title just kind of grosses me out. Worst pun for a film ever. Seriously. Title aside though, was this a terrible film?

Yup.

I’m sure you could have guessed this film was stupid. What I was not aware of was that it starred Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Alba and Sophie Turner.

Before I get into the plot of this dud, Let’s think about those stars for a minute. That means Nick Fury, Sue Storm and Jean Grey all teamed up to be in a film about girls being raised to be lethally effective assassins for the government. How is this not the Black Widow movie? Really, I don’t get it.

You know what else I don’t get? Why this movie exists.

The idea of the plot is not actually that bad. A young orphan girl is trained by a government agency to be a killer but what she really wants is to have a normal life and experience high school. Sure, okay, given the right writing and acting I could buy into this.

Instead we get a montage of little kids fighting and Sam Jackson just yelling at them. They do stuff like knife skills, car chases and sparring. For the car chase a kid gets out of the car and there is literally no way she could have seen over the dash so I have no idea how she was driving.

Samuel L. Jackson spends the movie pretty much being Nick Fury but without the eye patch. He wants to hunt down Jessica Alba’s character because, uh, bad guy I guess? And Sophie Turner spends her portion of the movie as a jealous and angry rival for Megan.

During a mission to capture Jessica Alba, Megan fakes her own death and goes to live with a family as a high school exchange student. Megan did her research by watching all the nineties teen movies and seems to think that is extensive research, despite the fact that there is YouTube, Twitter and plain old Google that would give her a more modern take.

This movie then spends the next third trying to flip the old high school movie tropes on their heads. The cheerleaders are actually nice. The popular guy does like Megan right away. Of course the one they don’t change is the sort of nerdy guy in the friend zone being the right match for Megan.

Inevitably Nick Fury gets wind of where Megan is and tells her that she has to wrap up loose ends and come back to the secret compound. Megan is not cool with that because – homecoming. Yeah, it’s always a prom or a homecoming dance in these teen romances. I will say that the homecoming dance part was improved with a kung-fu fight between Megan and Sophie Turner. Also, as a side note, if you are wondering why the only character I am referring to as their character name is Megan, it’s because none of the rest of the characters were worth remembering.

The film goes on, Megan bonds with her family, she defeats her enemy, captures the bad guy, goes to homecoming, loses her date, gets her date and is allowed to live a normal life. Yay!

There are a few things that stood out to me in this film.

• Dan Fogler plays a seriously disturbingly lecherous teacher towards the popular kid, Cash in this film. It was as cringe-worthy as the title and I can’t stop thinking of how gross it was because, Dan Fogler is not a minor and the popular kid, was a minor. Really gross man. Please just stick to The Walking Dead, okay Dan?
• To be honest there are a few good lines in this movie but the rest was so bad, I can’t even remember them anymore.
• The kid who plays the little brother in the exchange student family, was kind of awesome playing around with all of Megan’s deadly toys.
• I also liked the turn around of the drunk goofus named Gooch who turns out to be a kind and sensitive guy by the end of the film.
• There was a stinger at the end of the film that would imply there could be sequels to this.
• Please God no.
• If you want maybe the worst every double feature of people poorly portraying lethal agents, pair this one with Undercover Grandpa. They are both on Netflix so if you need to Netflix and chill, emphasis on chill, it’s a great match up.

Next week I am going to take on one of my favorite directors who just happens to have made a really bad film. Yoga Hosers watch out!

Lethally yours,

Slick Dungeon