2004 - D.E.B.S., silly spy satire with a gimmick

D.E.B.S. stands for "Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength,"  it's a secret organization that recruits high school students through the SAT exam which has buried questions that ascertain if the student is possible secret agent material.  The students recruited by the  D.E.B.S., seem to be mostly beautiful high school girls who wear tight tops and very short skirts.  The story involves the D.E.B.S. attempting to stop an evil villain called Lucy Diamond also played by a gorgeous young girl.  The plot twist or gimmick in this film is that one of the D.E.B.S., Amy falls in love with Lucy Diamond and vice versa.  Will Amy stop Lucy Diamond or run away with her instead?

The humor is very dumb in this movie.  For the most part a few of the gags come off but it's just a lot of silly shenanigans going on throughout the film.  The actors playing the girl spies in training seem to struggle with finding their comic timing throughout the film.  None of the girls really stands out with the exception of  Jordana Brewster as the evil Lucy Diamond.  Brewster's claim to fame is as the 10th or 11th banana in all those Fast and Furious movies.  Only Holland Taylor as the head of the school knows how to make a line funny in a script that really isn't all that funny.

 

D.E.B.S. actually exists in two versions.  A short film that the writer/director Angela Robinson filmed which made the rounds at film festivals. It was seen by some studio executive who green lighted turning it into a feature film.  I haven't seen the short version of  D.E.B.S. but I have a feeling it probably played better than the feature film which took it's one joke premise and kind of beat it into the ground.  I know that girls running around in short skirts with guns is supposed to be funny but it did seem a little exploitive after a while. 

 

The running time is 92 minutes.