Change Your Image
rodneypwelch
Reviews
Bad Reputation (2005)
It starts out promisingly...(Spoilers included)
and then takes a bad turn. This is a "high-school revenge movie" that more or less follows the template established by "Carrie" and "Christine," although without the supernatural business. Still, the idea is the same: a harmless nerdy wallflower gets used and abused by the popular kids, turns the tables and wreaks vengeance on her persecutors, and then becomes so power-mad that she destroys herself. The idea has been used so many times that its become almost mythic, and a number of movies know how to use it. In the first half of the movie, writer-director Hemphill (despite the obvious limitations with acting talent) gets it mostly right: he makes you identify with sweet Michelle, the Henry Miller-reading outcast who gets raped and humiliated at a party and so badly slandered at school that even the guidance counselor hits her up. Hemphill doesn't exploit her rape the way a lot of movies in the 1970s and 1980s might have, with a lot of boob and butt shots, where the rape becomes a kind of vicarious thrill for the audience. Instead, he makes it ugly, and then further ratchets up the collective audience hatred for the perps by adding insult to injury, as both the rapists and their snotty, viciously cliquish girlfriends conspire to trash Michelle's rep at school. All fine and good, because you know there is going to be a payoff, that these jerks and bitches will pay for this sins. Unfortunately for the audience, Michelle goes overnight from being sympathetic victim to inhuman monster. Sure, you want the bad guys painfully punished, but what we get is just prolonged torture -- which is torture is sit through. It's unpleasant, disgusting, ugly, and a lot less fun than it sounds. (Although it was kinda funny to watch her bash one guy with a textbook so badly that blood spattered the walls. Was this one of those switchblade-wielding history books?) "Heathers" (from which it borrows freely) got away with a lot of the same material because it was more capably written and wickedly funny. Here you just have the increasingly unlikable Michelle wearily rampaging her bloody way through the student body, all but leaving aside any question of how she manages to get away with it. I guess part of the reason is that her town has, by my count, only two police officers, who only appear for a couple minutes and ask maybe one question. Also, Michelle is apparently an expert at cutting up and disposing of the body of a guy she kills in her own bedroom. No, I guess you shouldn't demand that much of movies as low-budget as this one. Writer-director Hemphill certainly didn't.