D.E.B.S.
Death in miniskirts.
I was trying to explain this movie to a friend of mine and he said “oh, Anime.” What a brilliant observation. The plot is classic yuri, just live action and American.
So: the S.A.T. hides a secret test the government uses to identify young women they can groom for superspydom and initiate into the DEBS. The DEBS (the acronym stands for “Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength”) go to school at an all-women spy academy, where they undergo rigorous training and take on the odd mission. Our DEBS are Dominique (Devon Aoki, also of Sin City), Max (Meagan Good, You Got Served), Janet (Jill Ritchie, Herbie Fully Loaded), and the “Perfect Score” DEBS prodigy Amy (Sara Foster, almost nothing). Dominique, Max, Janet, and Amy are close to “Endgame” — that’s graduation — and they’ve been given a vital mission: spy on secretive super-criminal Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster, Annapolis) as she meets with former KGB assassin Ninotchka Kaprova. “What does a reclusive criminal mastermind want with a Russian trained killer?”, asks one of the DEBS.
It’s a blind date set up by Lucy’s sidekick Scud (Jimmi Simpson, Herbie Fully Loaded) . So Lucy is gay, a fact that totally ruins Amy’s senior thesis on the twentysomething crime lord. But the date turns bad even before a poorly-timed spat between Amy and her Homeland Security ex-of-five-hours Bobby (Geoff Stults) blows the DEBS surveilance. Everyone shoots up the Les Deux Amours and as Lucy flees, the DEBS give chase. Amy eventually catches up with Lucy but lets her get away after discussing her paper.
Although Amy is the enemy, Lucy is immediately smitten and sets out to woo her new love interest. She asks Scud for background. “She is their pride and joy,” he says. “She is literally their poster child.”
“Well,” says Lucy, “their poster child doesn’t know it yet, but she’s into me.”
No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!
What follows is classic teen romantic-comedy transposed to the key of spy. The romance severely tries Amy’s relationship with her fellow DEBS and her CIA parent-surrogates. The former see Amy’s crush as a betrayal of friendship, whereas the latter tend towards prosecution of high treason. Before the end of the movie, Amy — and the audience — has learned an important lesson about being who you are, not who people expect you to be. That’s a hokey sentence, but the film has a distinct “After School Special” mood.
You know how women in romantic comedies have at least one unthreatening homosexual man friend? Some boy who can say “honey, do not go out in that skirt?” Well, Lucy is gay — so that card is on the table. This is where Scud comes in: a heterosexual male who helps Lucy plan her guerrilla dating tactics. And the subplot of Scud’s romance with Janet gives us something we can relate to just a little bit better. Oh, and Jimmi has more comedic timing than the rest of the cast put together.
The marketing in this case sells the film shorter than the DEBS’ plaid mini-skirts: They’re crime-fighting hotties with killer bodies,” says the DVD case. Male-oriented lesbianism this ain’t, though — it’s actually a sweet and teen-friendly love story. At its most explicit, it is still more tame than the sex scenes in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. And at its most crude, it never reaches the depths of G-rated Disney potty humor. The only reason this movie has a PG-13 rating is the lesbian love story at its center.
The movie is clearly not for everyone. Roger Ebert, in particular, doesn’t seem to get it. He scolds the movie for being insufficiently developed:
At one point in “D.E.B.S.” a team member uses the term “supervillain” not ironically but descriptively, leading to a new rule for Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary: Movies that refer to supervillains not ironically but descriptively reveal an insufficient disconnect between the pitch and the story. The rule has countless subsets, such as characters referring to themselves or others as heroes. Best friends who say “I’m only comic relief” are given a provisional pass.
But that’s part of the point: it wouldn’t be yuri without the ludicrous premise; it wouldn’t be after-school-special without the familiar teen-message-film tropes. It’s Gen X irony without the nihilism, embracing cheesiness for its endearing qualities instead of playing them off for a cheap laugh. If that does not sound particularly good to you, then do steer clear. Otherwise this relatively short film (91 minutes!) needs a place in your collection. Rarely is a bad film this good.
