Movie Review - Damsels in Distress

Damsels in Distress (2012)

Starring Greta Gerwig, Analeigh Tipton, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Carrie MacLemore, and Adam Brody

Directed by Whit Stillman

Perhaps I formulated my Worst of 2012 list prematurely.  Quite frankly, I'm a little lost as to what Damsels in Distress is and what it's trying to be and that confusion is the only thing that's actually saving it from a bottom of the rung grade because it's at least made me think a tiny bit.  Greta Gerwig is Violet, a college student at the fictional Seven Oaks University, who is the head of the Suicide Prevention Center along with her buddies and roommates Heather (Carrie MacLemore) and Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke).  Violet's suicide prevention method: dance.  Get the depressed kids together to dance and euphoria will spread into their psyches.  As the school year begins, they meet incoming sophomore Lily (Analeigh Tipton) who ends up becoming their roommate, but who also questions the odd nature of these three gals who are disliked around much of the campus for their quirkiness.

And it's the "quirkiness" that fails Damsels in Distress.  There's not a single frame of this movie that rings true.  Dialog (and there is tons and tons of dialog) is forced and grating, oftentimes trying to be super-cutesy while seconds later trying to be deep (or at least that "college deep" where young adults think they're saying something important but are really just full of hot air).  Any story is essentially nonexistent.  The film even sets itself up into mini-vignettes that don't amount to much of anything by the film's end.

The only thing remotely saving this is that the cast was at least attempting to make this watchable.  Analeigh Tipton who I liked in Crazy Stupid Love is fine here as is Adam Brody (as a love interest for Violet and Lily), Carrie MacLemore, and Megalyn Echikunwoke.  Greta Gerwig was unfortunately tasked with an impossible role.  Violet from the outset is obnoxious and tediously boring and as a lead character she has no charisma.  There was little that Gerwig could do to help things along.

The RyMickey Rating:  D