Marni Olivia Olsen (Kristen Bell) discovers that her brother is about to marry the woman who made her high school years hell. In the weekend leading up to their wedding, Marni does everything she can to try and get an apology from her ex-nemesis Joanne (Odette Yustman), without much luck.
Director Andy Fickman may be best remembered for his 2006 film, She’s the Man… Or 2009s Race to With Mountain… Ok, so neither film is particularly memorable, and it might be best to forget you ever heard about You Again. The idea of the film is a very simple one; Marni’s family all love Joanne, and have no idea that the two girls had such a fraught relationship in high school. In fact, Joanne doesn’t seem to remember either. In a little twist of fate, it turns out that Joanne’s aunt Mona (Sigourney Weaver) and Marni’s mum Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis) had a similar relationship when they were in high school together. The film plays out with the two sets of women trying to get the other to admit what their wrong doing.
It has been a long time since a film has been as overacted as You Again. The cast should be wonderful – Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver and Victor Garber – but somewhere along the line these acclaimed actors were told to ‘ham it up’. Kristen Bell is fine to begin with, but it is not long until she is overdoing it with the rest of them. The ham acting continues through the film, and reaches it’s peak with a girlfight between Bell and Yustman at a wedding rehearsal dinner and an appalling cameo from Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth. Chenoweth’s character is cheesy and annoyingly high-pitched, and is a complete waste of the actress’s talents.
There appears to be a push to make Bell the new darling of Hollywood, but she doesn’t seem to be able to carry such a responsibility. She is good in supporting roles – she proved that with Forgetting Sarah Marshall – but she begins to bow under the pressure of having You Again rely on her. Weaver and Curtis’s roles are disappointingly one-dimensional, and while it is great to see Garber back on the big screen he is sadly underused.
The film trundles toward a conclusion that the audience can see coming a mile away, but then wraps up all too quickly. Marni forgives Joanne over a can of spray cheese and suddenly becomes her best friend. The film closes on the wedding of Marni’s enemy and her brother, but because the girls bonded in front of the fridge, Marni helps to organise the wedding.
You Again tries to give us a heart warming message about giving people a second chance, but is over acted, overly silly – in a bad way – and mis-cast. If you want to watch a film about a girl getting one up on her bully, best to rent Mean Girls one more time and give You Again a wide berth.
Hi, it’s Darren. When I went looking for the trailer for this post, I found this little blooper reel:
