Slap Her, She's French: Review By B. Alan Orange

Code Orange Alert #38186: Slap Her, She's French

Have you ever come across a dead body lying facedown in the muck? You want to stop and see if that person's still alive, still breathing. Yet, her bloated flesh is a stillborn giveaway that all hope is beyond repair. Her motionless limbs bob about the muddy bank like a deflated inner tube near the ass-end Dog Days of summer. Every once in awhile some bubbles will float to pop at the surface, but you can tell it's just Ol' Rigger Mortis squeezing that last gasp of oxygen out of her long-since-dead lungs. For a moment, you think about getting a net and fishing this diseased corpse out of the water. Then you realize it's not worth the effort. Sometimes, dead things need to lie in the ravine and drift there until they disintegrate. Hopefully out of view of our general public. That's 'Slap Her, She's French' in a nutshell. Except, sadly, it will be left to ride in front of those unfortunate fifteen, or so, people who'll accidentally pay to see this in whatever theater unmercifully doles it out as if they had a living, breathing piece of entertainment on their hands.

"No French People were harmed in the making of this movie," A title card at end credits gleefully informs us. Yeah, too bad they didn't account for the audience. "Slap Her" hurts in an odd way. It's supposed to be this gracious comedy about revenge, but I don't recall a single joke accomplishing its minimum wage vocational duty. I've never heard an audience remain so dead quiet. Slap's every attempt at making us laugh falls on the pristine floor and scampers away in embarrassment. This has got to be the most tone-deaf professional feature I've ever witnessed. I'd like to think it was the fault of our all-critic screening, and that those of us in attendance, who are so-called 'film reviewers', were just too cynical and callus to enjoy it. I thought, maybe, we're all so jaded, we can't see a funny movie when it's barking in our face. Nope. That's not it. This picture stinks. The tag line calls 'Slap Her' an American Comedy with a French Twist. The French part must be that it sucks.

Here's a teen farce that's played itself out at the end of an era. At once, it wants to be a cheerleading/prom queen picture, but it can't muster enough energy to be as vapidly entertaining as the neo-classic Bring It On, or even Sugar & Sp*ce. There are hints of Clueless in Slap's storyline, but this script is hidden in a desk at the back of the class, out of reach; out of touch. Sure, it has all the makings of a watchable film. Somehow, it ditched even those quaint aspirations for total failure. I'm at a loss at how something so seemingly easy could go so wrong. Slap Her is not dumb or sloppy in a Corky Romano since. It's just flat like uncarbonated soda; a punctured bicycle tire in the park. It's hovering below what it wants to be, and you can feel it struggling. This is a girl trapped under ice, and she's going to die before anyone can punch through that thick frozen lake to save her.

It's hard to figure out what went wrong here, and I'm going to place all the blame on the director. Melanie Mayron has totally missed the boat in trying to keep an apparent ambiance lingering about her project. The premise isn't flawed. It's a rather stable one, given this type of genre. The basic premise could stand on its own feet; I have faith in that. I've seen it done a million times, a millions different ways. None of them were as boring, or as lifted, as this.

She's French centers all it's unambitious energy on a Texan named Starla Grady. She's Miss Popularity at Splendona (ha, that's so not clever) high school; a prudish kooze in a breezy summer dress who's had life pretty much handed to her on a plate. In order to win whatever lame Miss Junior Pageant she's a part of, she promises to house a French foreign exchange student. After a slow start full of cows and boring back talk, we are quickly escorted through the film's only truly inspired incident, which sees a bunch of hot honies dressed-up like cowgirls singing the joys of beef. It looked as though this might hold an air of originality; a weird twist on what's come before it. But then the next 90 minutes completely destroy that notion.

The exchange student comes in the form of Genevieve LePlouff, played by Piper Perabo (the most ridiculous screen name I've heard since Alley Sheedy). Piper plays up her dowdy klutz as a fugly nerd in a beret. Of course we can see where this is going. Soon, LePlouff is discovered as a hidden beauty. She jumps on the fast track to popularity; she knocks her hostess off that royalty platform, and then gets exposed for the fraud she is. Most of the time we're left to wallow in Starla's self pity; the girl used to be a star and was once a future news anchor ala Jillian Barberie. After LePlouff gets done with her, she's a cowering wreck.

There's one scene where LePlouff gives Starla, played by Jane McGregor, some magic mushrooms and then has her thrown in jail. McGregor's doped-up mug shot mugging is supposed to be funny, but by the time we've reached this point, it's extremely embarrassing. Especially, as an audience member, to watch. This joke falls face first off the top of a twenty-story building and lands hard against that cruel asphalt with a thick splattering of blood. Jane is left to dangle in front of us, helplessly trying to make the most of her screen time. It's an awful ploy. The director was the only one with an eye to see that this wasn't working. Either that, or the cinematographer, who shall remain nameless, could have spoken up. Slap Her suffers from a deadly form of bland cuteness. I fear not one crewmember had the courage to step forward and forewarn the others that what they were working on was wrong; that it was a waist of film stock headed for dullsville.

I will say, for a low budget, out-of-left-field project, the production values are impeccable. There's a lush, vivid color sewn throughout this mess. And it has one of the most capable ensemble casts ever assigned to such a horrid wretch of a film. Perabo's evidently doing time in that pre-Adonis sh*tfield of crap, cultivating a charming personality that's sure to land her on numerous covers. Yeah, they're right (those hype-bastards); she probably is the next Julia Roberts. This is her Satisfaction; and I wouldn't doubt if they changed the name of this crapshoot, just like that did with that flick, to trick you into watching it again when it comes on TV. Slap Her is a small, torturous treat for those Piper completists who'll only keep this in their Stalker cabinet out of pity.

Then there's Jane. She's got the chops to be in any number of better teen flicks. Hopefully she'll be able to recover from this train wreck. Even the supporting players are nice to look at. Nicki Lynn Aycox (yum) & Alexandra Adi prove their back-up status as a couple of High School Hoochies, yet director Mayron can't even get their rudimentary lesbian scene off the ground. It's clumsy, mishandled, dumb, and included only because it seems to be the thing to do nowadays. God forbid a movie doesn't have a gay character in it. This one scene encompasses everything that is wrong with Slap Her, She's French.

Heck, even Michael McKean can't find firm footing here. He's been a Lenny survivor of the sitcom set, going beyond the call of duty numerous times in as many movies. I can't really recall a time when this guy didn't at least bring a smile to my face. Here, he's groan inducing. He's this French teacher who's enamoured with his young female students. It's supposed to be played for laughs. Instead, it comes across as creepy and misguided. Yes, when Michael McKean can't even raise the weight of a failing picture just a little bit, you've gotta chalk it up as a lost cause.

I hate being mean to such a small film. I know it's tough out there, with all that screen competition and all. But if you're going to hurt me and steal my time, I'm going to bitch about it, no matter how diminutive a gnat you may be. I tried to come up with something nice to say in Slap Her's defense, but I couldn't get it done. This is awful crap. I would never willingly subject myself to it, or let you do the same. But, then Bio-Zombies is one of my favorite movies...So maybe you should rethink my opinion and ask yourself if you trust me. Do you trust me?

I don't trust myself. But then I'd never willingly lead myself through a minefield, either.

"Yes, Orange. It was pretty bad."

"Shut up, Bag. I'm not talking to you. Why don't you go back to your Russian Albino F*ghag."

I'm going to go hide. Hopefully this storm won't last too long.