Barely Lethal: Movie Review

Director Kyle Newman returns to the director’s chair for his first feature film since 2009’s “Fanboys”. I am starting to doubt that a good comedy can be made based on a premise of teenage girls being groomed to be secret government agents. 2004’s “D.E.B.S.” was bad, but 2015’s “Barely Lethal” is probably even worse. Hailee Steinfeld made a strong big-screen start with 2010’s “True Grit but seems to be taking a few steps backwards this summer with “Pitch Perfect 2” and Barely Lethal.

When a teenage special ops agent (Steinfeld), gets separated from her team while on a mission, she decides to fake her own death so that she can try to have the normal teenage experience. The agent sets herself up as Canadian foreign exchange student Megan Walsh and moves in with the Larson family.

Of course Megan doesn’t quite know how to act as a normal teenager. She watched a ton of 90’s era high school movies like “Clueless” and “Mean Girls” for research. Megan is also rooming with fellow student Liz Larson (Dove Cameron) who is really trying to avoid the awkward addition to her family.

Megan actually finds some popularity in high school when a video of her beating up a rival high school football team goes viral and to top it off, she gets herself in a love triangle with the school AV Geek and the coolest guy in school.

“Barely Lethal” borrows from every high school movie cliché possible and then throws in a lame CIA subplot involving a terrorist (Jessica Alba). Nothing here works, not a single laugh or thrilling action sequence. The addition of Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie King, Dan Fogler, or even Jackass’s Steve-O can save this thing. “Barely Lethal” barely registers, and needs to be taken out.

By: Marc Ferman