Barely lethal (2015)

Genre: Action/ Comedy

Time: 1h 38mins

Director: Kyle Newman

Quick Summary: A teenage special ops agent coveting a "normal" adolescence fakes her own death and enrols in a suburban high school. She quickly learns that surviving the treacherous waters of high school is more challenging than international espionage.

I shouldn't have liked this as much as I did. It was fun. Who knew A24 and Disney Channel were the mash-up I needed. 

The storyline, despite being so generic and predictable, actually still turned out to be entertaining for what it was. Really, you don't need to think about anything while watching this, just sit back and enjoy it. The biggest surprise for me is to see Samuel L. Jackson in this. Though it was a shame he didn't get much screen time. I'm glad he was incredibly funny with what time he did get.

The comedy is mostly situational; in other words, there aren't a ton of punchline gags and snappy zingers. Overall it's pretty harmless and stuff you would typically get in any Teen Comedy. It was still pretty funny though, it got a few chuckles out of me. A lot of the humour comes from watching our main character learn to be a teenager through first learning from 90's teen movies, and then struggling with the modern generation of teens. 

With the small action scenes we got, they actually weren't that bad and the choreography for the actual fights was still engaging, though you don't actually see any harmful stuff. 

Haylee Steinfield is cute and gets even cuter the more she grows on you, as at first I found her pretty cringe-worthy. But after the whole, "Awkward teenager trying to explore fashion" moments, she gets a lot better. It was a lot of fun watching her figure out her young teenage life and attitude. 

Honestly, this is a cute fun film to just enjoy. Don't think about it. It screams 2015 a lot of the time, but really that made me laugh at it much more. 

5/10