I don’t know why Austin Chick decided to attempt a feminist film. Did he feel that his surname made it his destiny? It’s certainly not for any truly feminist reason because homeboy went about it all wrong. I imagine Mr. Chick as the sort of guy who took Women’s Studies in college specifically to bang the straight ladies in the class. He certainly wasn’t there to learn because there is not one iota of legitimate feminism in “Girls Against Boys.”
Now, I’m not saying that every Girls and Guns caper has to be polemic. But a revenge plot as personal as the one that Shae and Lu embark on implies that Chick is trying to be poignant about something. Is the intended theme of this film anything more than just “Rape is bad, mmmkay”? Only Austin Chick knows.
The tale of beautiful co-ed, Shae, begins as she gushes to her friend about the romantic weekend she’s about to have with her boyfriend. A little expository dialog reveals that said boyfriend is married, but that he is currently separated from his wife. Phew! But low and behold, her low-rent Jason Statham beau unexpectedly dumps her a*s because he’s decided to try and work it out with wifey (for the sake of his daughter). That’s the first strike, Men!
Shae’s fellow bartender, Lu, offers to cure her of the mopes. The girls do what girls always do on Get Over Your Ex dates: They get completely hammered, flirt with strange men and then agree to go home with them. Once inside the comically hipster Brooklyn loft (they have a house D.J.), Shae realizes she is way more hammered than she thought and retires to the bathroom where she remains for several hours. Eventually, the boy who got dibs offers to take her home where of course he rapes her. That’s strike 2, Boys!
Immediately after the departure of her rapist, Shae calls on her ex-boyfriend to comfort her. Apparently, in British, “comfort” means “rape.” This girl cannot stop getting raped. Strike 3.
Shae tells Lu about her rapetastic weekend and Lu convinces Shae to report the crime to the always-helpful movie police. Naturally, the precinct is filled with male officers who see nothing wrong with a little in-out and they send her on her way. That’s strike 4. Being a woman, I don’t know that much about sports metaphors, but I think that’s the last strike on the way to becoming a vigilante murderer.
Lu totally saw this coming and has the foresight to seduce and kill one of the cops in order to procure a gun. Commence rampage. After that, if a fellow even looks at one of these ladies wrong, he gets a cap. Did I mention they do all of this in the skimpiest outfits imaginable? You don’t want all that clothing to get in the way of your vendetta. That’s feminism in a nutshell.
I kid. Not only is it not feminism, it’s also a really f*****g stupid idea. First of all, we know (from movies!) that killing rapists never solves anything. You kill one and a hundred take his place. Plus, murder is the dumbest kind of revenge because it just makes it impossible for you to live a normal life after that. If you get raped and decide to take it through legal channels, even if everyone you meet along the way is completely unhelpful, you will eventually recover from the trauma.
On the other hand, Shae is date raped twice in as many days, so either she’s just having a really bad week or else she just has the absolute worst taste in men ever. If it’s the latter, it’s probably easier to pinpoint the chink in her selection process than it is to become a vigilante. Look, I know that this is meant to be a fantasy, but even in that context, Shae’s transformation feels totally out of the blue. That makes her seem more crazy than wronged. And thus, she is a lot harder to sympathize with.
Meanwhile, Lu has zero redeeming qualities (unless you count being “the hot one”). If we are to assume that Lu has killed before (and based on her cavalier attitude about it, I think we are), then the only reason she convinced Shae to report the rape to the police was to prove that they had to take the law into their own hands. Later on, Lu reveals that there was no trauma in her life to make her this way. So she really is just loony tunes. Implying that all women are crazy is just about the least feminist stance a director can take.
One might argue that the key to understanding Austin Chick’s message is in the Women’s Studies class that Shae is taking. One lecture is about how women are objectified in the media. But since Lu and Shae are beautiful, scantily clad women with virtually no back story whose lives revolve around either getting raped by men or killing them, it often feels like one big middle finger to Women’s Studies. If that’s his game, well then to him I say, “F**k you.” If, on the other hand, he really was trying, I think he ought to consider retaking that class.
