Review: Girls Against Boys, starring Danielle Panabaker

January 28th 2013, 7:42am

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

PLOT: After a series of bad experiences with men, Shae teams up with her co-worker, Lu who has a simple, deadly way of dealing with the opposite sex.

REVIEW: After a series of bad experiences with men, Shae (Danielle Panabaker) teams up with her co-worker, Lu (Nicole LaLiberte) who has a simple, deadly way of dealing with the opposite sex. You ever see that movie Monster? Well, this is sort of like that. Well, it’s sort of like that if you take a couple of hot female leads who absolutely revel in getting revenge on the males who may (or may not) have done them wrong. Lu and Shae are a couple of hotties who work as bartenders and enjoy the nightlife and all of the poisons that come with it. Shae has a boyfriend as the film begins, but he soon ends their tryst when telling her he’s getting back together with his family. In this relationship, Shae is the slightly more level-headed one, while Lu tends to be slightly more wild.

Of course, things begin to take a turn for the worst when Shae almost gets raped one evening by an awfully pushy fellow named Simon (the bland Michael Stahl-David) and the police turn out to be no help at all. Lu winds up stealing a gun, and the two decide they’re going to take out Simon and his whole gang of jerky dudes and just about anyone else who stands in their way. Of course, as all of this develops, Lu begins to really lust unhealthily for Shae as well.

This exploitation-style flick is really out to show off the goods of each lady- there are just so many long shots of them in tight dresses and revealing outfits and the other wonderful things we love about women. This is really a revenge flick at heart, and I use the word heart somewhat lightly, as this film doesn’t have a lot. Director Austin Chick uses some neat visual and audio tricks (with a reliance on slow-mo) to get results, and its stylistic enough. Performances are decent from our leading ladies Danielle Panabaker and Nicole Laliberte, with Panabaker standing out here with a good showing. Gore hounds don’t really need to apply here, aside from a couple of memorable moments, most kills are over before you even know what happened. There’s some plotted out violence, but again- nothing overly graphic.

I just don’t get how things can even work. These two wipe out a lot of people, and the police just never seem to catch on. On top of this, it’s like the two of them are just fine with deciding to kill people. You really don’t get much of a sense of remorse here, or even real regret. There is a sympathetic “real” love interest guy who gets introduced late in the film, but it doesn’t come soon enough and he has to fight against Lu’s obsessive tendencies while he’s at it. The whole thing comes off like another attempt at Thelma and Louise, but it doesn’t have the soul, believability or amusement attached to it. The girls just come off way crazier than the men do, and it’s hard to really root for anyone.

At the end of the day, I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this one. I didn’t feel a great sense of female empowerment going on, just a couple of girls who go way off the deep end. Girls against Boys is a bit confusing in its motivations. The film is shot with a good sense of visual style and all and is certainly entertaining enough to watch but by no means was it as badass, edgy or different as it might think it is.

GET THE FILM ON BLU-RAY HERE