The soundtrack is dominated by Bikini Kill, particularly "Rebel Girl," also covered in the film by the teenage band The Linda Lindas. This is very insightful! Hiraga is a natural as a young romantic lead. At one point, Vivian, hyped-up on feminist outrage, includes him in her generalized critique, even though he hasn't done anything wrong. The romance that blossoms between Seth and Vivian is very sweet, but it has its nuances, too.
A kid named Seth ( Nico Hiraga: you probably remember him from " Booksmart") is a shy ally of the Moxie movement. "Moxie" doesn't have the satirical bite of, say, "Mean Girls," nor does it have a particularly punk rock energy, but Poehler does an admirable job keeping things moving. Lucy, so central to the film’s early sequences, takes a backseat, at least in terms of screen time, once the movement is up and running. Nineties riot grrrl was criticized for not being inclusive enough, something Poehler's character admits, and so "Moxie" is a sometimes-awkward attempt to course-correct. The attempt to make the feminism of “Moxie” intersectional is well-meaning (and necessary), but leads to some inadvertent tokenism in the execution. Tamara Chestna and Dylan Meyer adapted Mathieu's book for the screen, and the script tries to do too much on occasion, as evidenced by the film's slightly bloated run-time. The movement sweeps the school, and causes a rift between Vivian and her rule-following best friend Claudia. There's CJ ( Josie Totah), a trans girl angry that she's not allowed to audition for the role of Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. There's Kaitlynn ( Sabrina Haskett), a girl sent home for wearing a tank top. There's Kiera ( Sydney Park) and Amaya ( Anjelika Washington), two talented athletes infuriated that their championship soccer team doesn't get as much support as the lack-luster boys' football team. There's Lucy, fired up by the possibilities of expanding her protest. Girls gather together, almost by osmosis. The zine, calling out the boorish behavior of boys and the sexist administration, immediately makes waves. She decides to put out her own and she calls it "Moxie."
It's the 'zines that grab Vivian's attention. Vivian's mother (Amy Poehler) is a cool mom (although not like the grotesque "cool mom" Poehler played in " Mean Girls"), and one night Vivian discovers her mother's punk-rock past. Basically "boys will be boys." Vivian and her best friend Claudia ( Lauren Tsai) are not "trouble-makers" like this, but something about Lucy's fearlessness inspires Vivian. When Lucy reports Mitchell's harassment to the principal (a soothing-voiced Marcia Gay Harden), the principal warns Lucy not to say the word "harassed" and to just suck it up and ignore him. Her cluelessness is challenged when a new girl named Lucy ( Alycia Pascual-Peña) makes waves, first by challenging the summer reading list, and then by standing up to the menacing cocky football-player bully, Mitchell Wilson ( Patrick Schwarzenegger). Vivian finds it annoying, but also doesn't have any sense she could push back. These dynamics are particularly toxic in the high school in "Moxie," where "rankings" are published on social media every year, rankings like "Best Rack," "Most Bangable," etc. High school is high school, no matter the era.
Directed by Amy Poehler, "Moxie" is both an awkward act of nostalgia for '90s activism and an attempt to push the riot grrrl legacy into the future. In "Moxie," a current-day teenage girl named Vivian ( Hadley Robinson) ignites a raging feminist movement in her high school, after discovering a treasure trove of riot grrrl memorabilia in her mother's trunk. With a talented young cast, "Moxie" takes its inspiration from the riot grrrl era of the '90s, from Bikini Kill (the punk rock feminist band most associated with riot grrrl), and, most of all, from the riot grrrl 'zines: self-created, self-designed, photo-copied, these 'zines spread across the country. High school is difficult for girls, but it's difficult for boys, too (at least girls aren't told "girls don't cry" from the moment they're born.) Girls, though, have their own specific challenges navigating a conformist world, and that's the world portrayed in "Moxie," based on a YA novel by Jennifer Mathieu. Those "dares" sound so simple, but they're not, particularly in high school. I got a proposition goes something like this:ĭare ya to cry right out loud." - Bikini Kill, "Hey Girlfriend"
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