The DUFF
High school is a lot like the Occupy Wall Street movement: Only one percent of the student body is satisfied with their looks and lives. For the other 99 percent, it’s a four-year slog toward graduation.
Bianca (Mae Whitman: Parenthood) is a senior who thinks she’s part of the one percent. Best friends since childhood with beautiful, smart and kind Jess (Skyler Samuels: American Horror Story) and Casey (Bianca A. Santos: Happy Land), Bianca takes it for granted that she’s as cool and popular as her friends. Her jock neighbor, Wesley (Robbie Amell: The Tomorrow People), shatters her delusion that she’s a worthwhile human being by informing her that she is a DUFF — Designated Ugly Fat Friend. As a DUFF, Bianca is the gatekeeper to her hot friends. Her existence is acknowledged only because of Jess and Casey.
Bianca is confusingly beautiful and slender. Only her style of T-shirts and minimal makeup makes her a DUFF.
Yet Bianca accepts this idiot’s opinion. She turns on her friends as traitors who befriended her so they would look better by comparison. She dumps them for Wesley, who helps transform her into a babe.
With his advice on dressing, chatting up boys and making out, Bianca ascends the social ranks. She gives up schoolwork in favor of professionally styled hair and makeup. Who needs academic achievements when you’ve perfected the art of a good blowout?
Director Ari Sandel (Aim High) fills the screen with emoticons and text-speak. Each frame looks like it’s pulled from a SnapChat.
His characters are all horrible. Granted, teens aren’t always warm and likeable, but Bianca and Wes are such brats that it’s hard to conjure up much sympathy for either.
The DUFF is the latest bad advice offered to kids in the guise of entertainment. As in most teen movies, this one has a message about being yourself and finding your inner beauty. But it’s hard not to notice that Bianca’s “true self” greatly resembles the dream girl Wes molded her into.
Only teens could love this movie, though they shouldn’t.