The DUFF is about a rather toxic concept. DUFF stands for “Designated Ugly Fat Friend,” the one person in a group that’s apparently there to be the approachable one, and to make the rest of the group look better in comparison. I am no longer young enough to know if things in movies about high school reflect the real experience anymore, but this premise strikes me as pretty ridiculous. But anyway, the concept only leads to a basic runthrough of high school tropes, and the film ends up struggling matching its subversive tone with the familiar elements of the teen romance.
Bianca (Mae Whitman) is best friends with Casey and Jessica (Bianca A. Santos and Skyler Samuels), two of the hottest girls in their high school. The three get along really well, until Bianca’s next-door neighbor Wesley (Robbie Amell) informs her that she’s the group’s DUFF. This brings all her insecurities to the surface, as she starts considering the possibility that her friends aren’t really her friends. Determined to no longer be a DUFF, she enlists the help of Wesley. Unfortunately, this brings her to the attention of Wesley’s ruthless on-again-off-again girlfriend Madison (Bella Thorne).
The most interesting bit of this premise lies in Bianca’s inherent insecurities. She seems to have plenty of self-confidence before she learns of the concept of the DUFF, and there’s potent drama in her coming to suspect that her friends don’t actually like her. But then the film doesn’t do anything with that. It basically has her freak out and break it off with her closest friends right away, and the film becomes about something else entirely. The film forgets about the friendship for a pretty long stretch, and focuses on Wesley’s mentoring of her.
And that’s when the film starts to feel overly familiar. The arc, as always, is for this one person to learn that she doesn’t want to be like everybody else, that maybe there are more important things in life than being popular in high school. It’s a concept that has been well covered in superior films. The DUFF doesn’t really have much new to say about the subject, and overcompensates by overemphasizing the role social media and the Internet play in the lives of young people. The film’s milieu involves a lot of hashtags and long, trite confrontations that involve name checking various social networks.
And at the end of it all, though the film stumps for something other than the imposed metrics for success in high school, it still falls to the clichés of the genre. Winning means looking good in a dress and getting the guy. It just doesn’t go to any interesting places. The film is fairly entertaining, though, thanks mainly to the efforts of the cast. Mae Whitman (who is by no means ugly or fat) is a terrific comic actress, and she shares strong chemistry with her co-star Robbie Amell. Also terrific is Alison Janney, who plays her motivational speaker mother. Her scenes involve spouting a lot of pseudo-psychological nonsense, and Janney’s commitment to every line is a reliable source of laughter.
The DUFF is all about praising the unconventional, but the film itself is painfully conventional. It is a film that is keenly aware of the times, but it takes its structure from films of the past. It’s about a makeover that doesn’t work out. It’s about mean girls getting their comeuppance. It’s about being with the hunky guy at the end of the day. Whatever else the film might say about being different, it’s all drowned out by its reluctance to stray from the established norm.
My Rating:
