Fantastic!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A remake of Clueless (1995) à la Whit Stillman but set in college rather than High School. No wonder that the movie after this one finds Stillman taking on a direct version of Jane Austen in Love & Friendship (2016) rather than a modern remake of Austen's Emma via Clueless. In this version of Emma we find the Cher role of Violet filled by Greta Gerwig in a similar almost panic mode at times, either over boys or fear of not being perfectly "good" enough. The Dionne role is filled by lookalike Megalyn Echikunwoke, who as in Clueless plays the more cynical and wiser sidekick to Violet. The Tai role who joins Violet's gaggle of gals whom like Cher is intent on educating her to their wise ways, is played by the more down to earth (like Tai) Analeigh Tipton who in no short order (as Brittany Murphy as Tai did in Clueless) causes boy problems for Violet as they become frenemies to some degree. The Paul Rudd character in Clueless is played by Adam Brody, and so on. An inside joke between the two movies is how both Greta and Adam Brody's characters are both exposed as using fake names for themselves. How does this stack up to Clueless? While Clueless is of course much better known as a classic modern comedy which made stars of a few of the actors, it is also more romantic than Damsels which is less focused on the romance of the lead characters. Damsels is of course first and foremost a Whit Stillman movie, which is like saying a Woody Allen movie since both have such unique comedic styles and voices. If you are unfamiliar with his oeuvre, well it is not really something you can understand through a description although my best attempt would be: imagine a Woody Allen movie made by a preppie WASP. Is it a good movie? I've seen some people disparage the film while calling themselves fans of Stillman's earlier work. I don't understand why they don't enjoy this one as well. It may be a slighter work in one sense, or maybe just less of a story or less convoluted, but it is also I think, funnier. It is I guess in that way like Stardust Memories, which to me is immensely funny, but not as well liked by many of Woody Allen's fans.

Damsels in Distress is awful for so many reasons but principally for a comedy script that isn't funny and multiple lousy performances.Greta Gerwig of course attracts something of a loyal following but she again turns in her usual irritating performance. While it could be pleaded the character of Violet is intended to be infuriating, and so the performance is intentionally irritating, as Gerwig gives exactly the same performance in every film she makes, we can only conclude the performer is to blame. Others around her (e.g. Analeigh Tipton as Lily, or Ryan Metcalf as Frank) do a reasonable job with the poor material, although Megalyn Echikunwoke as Rose cannot be forgiven for giving one of the worst performances ever on film. And just when you thought things could not get any worse, the film closes with two really bad dance sequences that kill stone dead any message about the wonders of dance which the film has tried to spin.Awful, simply awful.

This is a review of "Damsels in Distress" and "The Last Days of Disco", two films by writer/director Whit Stillman.Released in 2011, "Damsels" stars Greta Gerwig as Violet, the leader of a band of young women. As they have been deeply scarred in the past, the girls invent new personas for themselves and attempt to help other wounded people by embarking on various altruistic endeavours. One of their schemes involve "inventing a new form of dance", in which dance becomes akin to a political movement used to spread "togetherness, love and happiness".Stillman's godfather, sociologist E Digby Baltzell, authored "Aristocracy and Caste in America" and helped popularise the term "Wasp". Stillman's films, meanwhile, tend to focus on the haute bourgeoisie, though he's more obsessed with questioning the naive assumptions they hold toward responsibility, culpability and leadership. In this regard, his films are preoccupied with characters whose well intentioned good deeds lead to disasters, or seemingly horrible characters who inadvertently help others. The intentions behind deeds are also examined: is altruism really altruism if it's unconsciously rooted in selfishness? Why do good deeds do damage? And why do the noblest of intentions oft lead to unforeseen disasters? All these questions arise during one subplot in which the girls date boyfriends who are less cool and less intelligent than they are (their intention is to transform the boys into something better). In another subplot, the girls hand out soap to unhygienic male students. Both plans backfire spectacularly, with the soap turned into a weapon/game and the girls' relationships with the guys having less to do with reformation than their own personal insecurities and hangups. The film then ends with our heroes dancing to "Things are looking up", originally sung by Fred Astaire in the 1937 film "A Damsel In Distress".Stillman was born into a very politically active, radically left-wing family. Many critics tout him as being one of the few "intellectual conservative directors", whilst others see his films as being reactionary responses to his parental upbringing. This is, after all, a guy whose films are often about "vindictiveness and self-centeredness unintentionally benefiting others" and "well-intentioned meddling causing damage", which is of course the credo of many far right groups. But Stillman really embodies a postmodern scepticism regarding both the political left and right. "When you're an egoist, none of the harm you do is intentional," characters in his earlier pictures state. And later: "Today barbarism is cloaked with self-righteousness and moral superiority." Elsewhere he has characters defending conservative values (marriage, monogamy etc) because, though they're simply rooted in "ritualistically enforced behaviour", such behaviour was itself "once deemed unconventional but has been adopted because it works for society". This argument is of course true, but also wrong in many instances. Stillman's films tend to present both sides of the coin.These contradictions become most apparent in Stillman's "The Last Days of Disco". Set in the mid 1980s, "Disco" centres on a group of articulate urbanites. They're descendants of wealth, but have a hard time making ends meet. This at first seems like an apologia for the upper middle classes, until various mouthpieces in the film mock the "troubles" of our cast, even as Stillman sympathises with them.The film then watches as the college graduates of the Me Generation set about co-opting disco trends and the totems of the sexual revolution. The "openness" of these social movements, however, quickly gets perverted into an arena of exclusivity, money, rules and regulations. The result is the creation of a false elite: those cool, attractive or pushy enough to get into the clubs and those willing to subject themselves to the club's arbitrary, superficial and capricious rules.The film then contrasts two characters. One's Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale), who's elegant, sophisticated, and always unintentionally harming others with her needle-like tongue. The other's Alice (Chloë Sevigny), a quietly sensitive woman who has no idea what the sexual revolution means for people like her. Acting free and sexy gets her stigmatised as a whore, whilst acting bookish and intellectual gets her stigmatised a prude. The disco dance floors epitomise this new sexual minefield, where there are no known steps, no clear partners, where attentions constantly shift, where no one touches for long, yet where there seemingly exists no boundaries."Control your own destiny. Don't wait for guys to call." Charlotte says, which is your typical Stillman "fact", in that its conservative counterpoint is then shown to be also true. Infinite choice has its own problems and self expression need not be free but a product of influence.Interestingly, Alice embodies a modernist sensibility. She has standards, values and is constantly judging and categorising. Charlotte embodies a postmodern subjectivity, which, of course, is couched in a aura of "nonjudgementality", in which its deemed okay to insult and criticise because what's said is always just a "silly personal opinion" anyway. Charlotte's lines frequently highlight this contradiction: "People hate being criticised" she says, before complaining that Alice was "too moralistic and judgemental in college". Later Alice sleeps with a character called Tom, who promptly ditches her when Alice follows Charlote's advice to become a sexual predator. "I crave sentient individuals who don't abandon their principles," Tom says, disgusted with the cheapening of romance and relations, whilst, ironically, sticking to modern conventions of "openness" with these lacerating speeches (and it is he who gives her a STD!). "I'm beginning to think," Alice later says, "that maybe the old system of people getting married based on mutual respect and shared aspirations, and slowly, over time, earning each other's love and admiration, worked the best." For Stillman, mores, commitments, values and manners have everything to do with what distinguishes us as human, they're just very fickle, unreliable things.8/10 - Worth one viewing.

"Damsels in Distress" lives in a world utterly of its own making, and you're either going to accept that world or you're not. I was won over and found this film to be a charming, eccentric movie about a group of college girls, and one in particular, who hide their insecurities behind a confident desire to better their fellow students.Greta Gerwig is the leader of the pack, a somewhat annoying girl who also remains rather winning and appealing thanks to Gerwig's terrific performance. The film reminded me somewhat of another movie released this year, Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" (though that's a far better film) in its quirky determination to stick to the rules it erects for itself, but also in its tone and its assembled cast of characters who are all basically good people trying to make sense of a frequently confusing and not always very pleasant world."Damsels in Distress" is not going to be to everyone's taste, but, also like "Moonrise Kingdom," if it is to your taste you'll probably be delighted by it.Grade: A-