Now, don’t take this post as another archive for your spank bank of knowledge because this is not going to be a feminist article or a movie critique. This is a passionately written article— an article completely derived of logic and cognitive thinking, this shit is ALL right brain material. MOXIE made me mad, and specifically, Vivian made me mad.

Why does Hollywood do that? Create a story with an interesting premise and fantastic characters just to shit all over it? Who allowed the self-insert main character to be in the star in this? Sure, center around a cookie-cutter blank canvas that we are ??supposed?? to believe is leading a feminist revolution and then fill the background with eccentric characters that would have been 1000% more interesting to choose as for the main character.

Why didn’t we see the film center around Claudia, the girl fighting back her immigrant parents’ conservative ideals as so to prevail with a new-birthed progressive feminism mindset? Why didn’t we see her and what she had to deal with behind the scenes? 

Now, I’ll admit that I did not like Claudia at first and thought she was just another stereotype of a conservative child raised by conservative tiger parents— the reality of what it’s like living with parents that grew up with the slang “Ching Chong!”

When Claudia said, “It’s because you’re white!” It gave me chills. I thought the film would go more in-depth about how feminism isn’t as easy for girls of color than white girls but that would have been expecting too much.

And I do relate to Claudia’s situation. No, it’s not a surprise that your Asian parents and relatives are not going to be the “wokest” people ever. They grew up in a country where they could be jailed for speaking poorly of the president. In America, you can have a photoshoot of your president’s decapitated head in your hand, and the consequences would be your name maybe gets posted on 4chan. People forget that being “woke” is a privilege.

Why didn’t we follow CJ’s character more, a transgender girl in the most un-accepting environment an LGBTQ teenager could be in? What did Vivian bring to the table besides her mother’s scrapbook collection?

I’m not making this a race conversation as more a write better movies conversation, but did we need another white girl as the forefront storm trooper for feminism when girls of POC and LGBTQ communities had their rights served to them last? Let’s reach a little bit more under the surface before making this a “pow-wow go girl!” movement.

I love Amy Poehler but c’mon. Why did we have to follow Vivian out of all people? The girl dove into feminism so that she had a story for her Berkely application. Depictions of her “character growth” include listening to a rocker chick band (the music in this movie, not my cup of tea) and being friends with the photo-copy man. After that, she’s .. the same girl but with a cool new friend group and a hot boyfriend by her side.

Now, the ending with Vivian did make me cry— I’ll give them that. I think it hit me because it was the only thing in the movie that felt real. 

I’m writing this article because I care. If it wasn’t for me tearing up at the end, I wouldn’t have written this article because why waste energy on something that had no potential?

I wouldn’t write an article about why I hated After (I didn’t care enough to watch it, but I think my point still stands). I wouldn’t write an article about why The Perfect Date on Netflix was cringe because let’s face it, who would be surprised?

Once I publish this article, I will probably see movie reviews from bullsh** news outlets like Variety or the Daily Mail’s Snapchat story saying, “it’s so empowering!” and, “did you know that the girl from 13 Reasons Why’s sister is in this movie?!”

Anyway, good day to you, Amy Poehler. I love your work and you’re the only celebrity autobiography I’ve ever read but please, for your next movie, fill the screen with Josie Totah instead.

Also, what the fuck was Seth in the movie for? The screen time used for him could have been used to develop Vivian and make it easier to root for her— the girl’s bathroom toilet paper had more of a character arc than her.