Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26856 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-07-25
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Icelandic, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Synopsis
Writer-director Angela Robinson expands a short film she showed at Sundance into this tongue-in-cheek feature, which is a satire of female spy flicks like CHARLIE'S ANGELS. The plot revolves around four sexy co-eds handpicked to work at an exclusive spy academy on the basis of their S.A.T. scores and their superior ability to lie, cheat, steal, and kill. The squad consists of feisty team-leader Max (Meagan Good), goodie-goodie Janet (Jill Ritchie), apathetic chain-smoker Dominique (Devon Aoki), and good-natured Amy (Sara Foster)--who wonders if being a spy is truly her destiny. Decked out in ultra-mini plaid skirts, the D.E.B.S. (stands for Discipline, Energy, Beauty, and Strength) prepare for their most important mission yet--capturing the deadly criminal mastermind Lucy Sky (Jordana Brewster). As it turns out, Lucy is little more than a helpless romantic, and when a lesbian crush develops between Lucy and Amy, the plot takes yet another twist. Over-the-top and self-referential, D.E.B.S. pokes fun at the CHARLIE'S ANGELS formula in a good-natured way, ultimately succeeding by not taking itself too seriously. Walking a thin line between parodying and emulating the genre, D.E.B.S. depends on the same aesthetic that it spoofs. In fact the only thing that truly distinguishes D.E.B.S. from films like CHARLIE'S ANGELS is that its core romance is a lesbian one. Luckily, this relationship is developed more fully than that of other action films, and is not sensationalised. A mood-appropriate 1980s-heavy soundtrack features Erasure, The Cure, and New Order.

Customer Reviews

Funny and unique
D.E.B.S. the movie is a wonderful oddity. At first glance it is like Charlie's Angels, only less intellectual... But then, like an optical illusion, you change viewpoint slightly, and suddenly it's a surreal comedy. Teenagers in schoolgirl uniforms who are deadly superspies, indeed!

Proof that it isn't your ordinary Hollywood big-canvas thriller:
1) It has a lesbian lovestory at its center!
2) And one of the main characters smoke!!

A couple of examples of the wonderfully satiric touches: the supervillain, Lucy Diamond (!), played by the gorgeous Gordana Brewster, has to flee rapidly in a big convention center, and she stops to consult a diagram of the building...
And the same supervillain needs to find the girl she has the hots for, Amy, in an big building, so she pulls out a palm sized device, and on the screen magically appears a 3D wire diagram of the building. But not only that, rotating the diagram, red spots appears, the first two are labelled "not Amy", and the third one is labbeled "Amy". That's just a wonderful parody of the trappings of the spy thriller genre.

Sadly, to enjoy it you have to suffer the sight of pretty young women running around in very short skirts. Alas, everything good has a price.

By the way, what explains how it's untypical of a feature film is that it originated from a ten-minute film, which originated from a little comic book, and all done by the same woman, Angela Robinson. Even the feature film was done for $3.5M, which is ridiculous for any film and not the least a spy thriller, and it looks surprisingly good for it, in fact it looks good for a film of any budget.

Another of the actresses is Devon Aoki, a gorgeous girl who has the shortest skirt of the four DEBS. ("Mommy, why does he keep talking about skirts?" - "Shh, I think he's gay.") I suspect that she was actually the bread crumb trail I followed to this film. In DEBS she affects a hilarious French accent and addictions to both nicotine and sex. Update: it turns out she's a supermodel, but I'm not ashamed of not knowing that, since neither was the director. Also, Devon herself came up with that great accent.

Don't miss the commentaries. The director is real film geek, and the girls are cute and funny. The actresses' comments vary between insightful/funny and "OMG, I love how your hair looks in this scene," so many times that they themselves start making fun of it.

Fun premise that could have been better executed - but still enjoyable fluffy viewing
The cover and blurb to "D.E.B.S." does not, except in one ambiguous quote, give away that the main plot of this film is a developing romance between two young women. Casual DVD buyers, chancing upon this film in the rack amongst other flicks with girls brandishing guns, may believe this to be a "Charlie's Angels" imitation - or spoof. Make no mistake, this is not a straightforward comedy take on the spy film genre, but a lesbian romance set against the backdrop of an all-female secret agent unit (with, incidentally, a terrible name - we find out what "D.E.B.S" stands for later, and it is pretty weak, just being a collection of words strung together rather than a proper abbreviation. In addition, the name is supposed, presumably, to be a play on "feds" i.e. federal agents, and bad guy characters exclaim "She's a DEB!" - the "S" then should simply denote a plural rather than standing for something, as we learn it does. Sorry - these things bother me, and no, I don't get out much).

The initial premise of "D.E.B.S." is a fun one - hidden in the SAT exams US teenagers take as part of applying to university is a secret test of students' "spy skills"; those who score well on the test are automatically accepted at the mysterious "Jameson University", a cover for the DEBS secret agent training base. Only girls, it seems, are DEBS, but guys are also running around in military style throughout the film, so there must be a guys' equivalent.

Amy Bradshaw (Sara Foster) is a pretty, blonde, goody-two shoes DEB who happens to be the "Perfect Score" - she aced the secret SAT test. Amy has a beefy boyfriend of the aforementioned military style, but realises at the film's opening that she doesn't love him and ends their relationship. Meanwhile, the DEBS learn that one of the world's most notorious supervillains, Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster) is back on their territory and set out to bring her to justice. When Amy meets Lucy, she realises the "supercriminal" isn't as she imagined at all - and perhaps Amy herself isn't the person she thought she was, either...

"D.E.B.S." started life as a one-joke short film and unfortunately it shows. The ideas here are not all that bad but there are not enough of them to carry a feature film. The acting from some of the cast, particularly Meagan Good and Devon Aoki as two of the D.E.B.S. team, also leaves a lot to be desired. This is a low-budget lesbian comedy film, so no-one is expecting Oscar-winning performances, but the only genuinely good turn here is from Brewster as Lucy Diamond, who takes the right tack in having fun with her role and even manages to strike a believable note in a film that generally not only borders on ridiculous, but slips right over into absurd in its attempts (not always successful) to be funny. Sara Foster, the other lead actress, is very pretty but at times has the expression of someone who doesn't know quite what she is doing in this film, which may give viewers who are not sure about watching this kind of thing reason to switch off. Her Amy is a heroine that you just can't root for the way you do the supposed "baddie" Lucy.

But all this said, I am still giving "D.E.B.S." 4 stars. Despite its undeniable flaws, I enjoyed watching this film, particularly Brewster's very likeable turn as Lucy, and there were a few good lines here and there that put a smile on my face. This fim is not for those who like their cinematic experiences to be polished or thought-provoking - it is pure fluffy nonsense with some silly jokes, some just plain bad jokes and a lesbian love story, and should only be approached as such. But if, like me, you like to switch off and watch something daft and fun every so often and are not averse to upbeat (if not downright silly!) lesbian romances, you may want to give this a chance.

There are a few little extras on the DVD which is good to see - releases of this nature sometimes have just the trailer.

D.E.B.S delight
A rather charming, funny film with two gorgeous leads (Sara Foster as Amy and Jordana Brewster as Lucy). The DVD extras include the love scene between the two that should have been in the movie and a full commentary by director and writer Angela Robinson and the stars, which is amusing and informative. Definitely a feel-good movie and a delight from start to finish.