High-school movies usually have as much to do with high school as “Godzilla” does with Tokyo. “The DUFF” is slightly radical in portraying high schoolers as human beings of normal niceness and intelligence.
That means this winsome comedy is a little low in the stakes department, not to mention predictable, but it gets an “A” for charm.
Bianca (an adorable Mae Whitman) is a confident, well-adjusted student whose two best friends tend to get more social offers than she does, and she gets tongue-tied around her soulful, tousle-haired crush (Nick Eversman). Bianca also gets rude treatment from the queen bee (Bella Thorne), but far from ruling the school, she doesn’t seem to matter much in the hierarchy. Bianca’s main problem is that her best friend Wesley (Robbie Amell) jokingly tells her she’s the Designated Ugly Fat Friend in her social circle.
Since her friends don’t think of her that way (there’s a breakup, but it’s initiated by Bianca) and since Wesley happens to be the hottest boy in school, this is a thin conflict to hang a movie on, but “The DUFF” isn’t really about Bianca shedding her outcast label and learning, I guess, to be an “incast.”
No, the gimmicky title is just a trick to get you into a low-key, good-natured teen rom-com. Wesley and Bianca have known each other since they were toddlers, and they have a sparkly rapport that screenwriter Josh A. Cagan sweetly develops from the source novel by Kody Keplinger. True, Wesley is technically the romantic property of mean girl Madison, but she has about as much screen time as the Blair Witch — though she is also roughly equally as frightening, if only in a Disney Channel sort of way.
Bianca and Wesley, though, have a relaxed and completely credible friendship as he teaches her about the perils of the “uniboob,” gets her to ditch the flannel shirts and instructs her in how to pick up guys. Mild embarrassment ensues when a video of Bianca goofing around with a department-store mannequin goes viral, but this is high school, and somebody else will be starring in a different viral video next Tuesday.
Bianca can handle the embarrassment, because Bianca is cool. And smart, and even a friend to her mom (Allison Janney, who makes a fairly awesome entrance while guzzling rosé, sobbing uncontrollably and running the lawnmower over her ex-husband’s clothes). Before long (in an especially disarming scene on a rock in the woods), Bianca’s actually instructing Wesley in things romantic, and even after taking to her room alone amid a setback, she has the wit to implore friends, “Please let me lie amongst the pizza a little longer.”
Apart from playing out exactly according to formula, the movie’s main problem is that Whitman is so personable and fetching that it’s hard to believe Bianca would have any shortage of friends or boyfriends. The movie doesn’t even make the usual half-hearted effort to ugly her up with a regulation pair of grandma glasses or a nerd barrette. That’s OK: the general lack of hokey tricks is part of what makes “The DUFF” feel grounded in reality.