That alone was enough to give me doubts about this movie –– who would ever go to a funeral home for a first date? Vivian proceeds to tell him that she likes that no one at school knows she created Moxie, saying she enjoys not having “to talk about it or explain it.” This is probably what feels the most frustrating about Vivian as a character: She lacks Although she created the zine, she hides behind it because she is too afraid to actually stand up for her classmates. The two of them walk around, pick their favorite coffin and end up lying in one together as they listen to music and talk about feminism. For example, when she and her crush Seth (Nico Hiraga, “Booksmart”) go on their first date, he takes her to a funeral home.
On top of not being interesting, Vivian is incredibly frustrating. It makes these parts of the film feel performative and begs the question: Why does Vivian have to be the main character of this story? But CJ’s character is not given the same depth as Vivian’s, so we never really get to know her. In one scene, Vivian’s friend CJ (Josie Totah, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”) talks about how, as a transgender student, her classmates and teachers fail to call her by her name. Throughout the movie, she is surrounded by girls who are far more interesting, but they are only given a couple of scenes to talk about the harassment they face.
When Vivian decides that enough is enough, she turns to her mother’s (Poehler) feminist past, pulling together a zine called Moxie and distributing it around the school.Īs a main character, Vivian is dull. It comes from everyone, whether it be the school’s star football player (Patrick Schwarzenegger, “Midnight Sun”), their teacher (Ike Barinholtz, “Neighbors”) or the principal (Marcia Gay Harden, “Into the Wild”), who turns a blind eye when harassment is reported. Specifically, she feels voiceless at school, where an overwhelming environment of misogyny seems to be the norm. This scene gets straight to the point of the film –– Vivian feels voiceless. But when she opens her mouth to scream, nothing comes out. Vivian is running through a forest while being chased by something. The movie opens with a nightmare sequence. “Moxie,” directed by Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation”), stars Hadley Robinson (“I’m Thinking of Ending Things”) as 16-year-old Vivian who anonymously starts a feminist zine when she becomes fed up with the sexism at her school.