Little Bitches is a 2018 comedy about a group of friends who vow to open their college acceptance letters at the same time during the big end-of-year party.
Not even trying to be anything but edgy, Nick Kreiss‘s Little Bitches is a ‘raunchy’ comedy that plays it pretty close to the vest in that it never quite goes wholly over-the-top in terms of the themes its after and yet lingers in a dark enough area that is serves the purpose. It has a manufactured feel to it, shiny and loud but paper thin. There are some very engaging characters here and surely the target audience might find some relatable humor and even a bit of fun, however I suspect most of it will seem overreaching and not really representative of their lives at all.
It begins in prologue with three close friends Annie (Jennette McCurdy), Marisa (Kiersey Clemons), and Kelly (Virginia Gardner) and a splash of text on the screen telling us its the freshman year, first day of school. The three are at party about to face their high school years and make a vow – after the ‘mean girls’ come by and make some threats involving unpeeled bananas and oral sex – that they will stay best friends forever, never be like them, and open their college acceptance letters at the same time. Skip ahead, post opening credits, and it’s now senior year, last day of school and things have definitely changed. Kelly has ventured off to side with the mean girls, leaving Annie and Marisa to the far peripheral where they talk about sex and girl things and their futures, Annie believing Kelly will come back to the fold while Marisa is having nothing of it. We then flashback through the years and relive the breakdown and wonder if it’s possible they will find friendship again.
With a title like Little Bitches, you get right away that a movie like this is straight up abandoning any sense of subtlety or irony, perhaps hoping to be controversial. These are outlandishly colored characters that headily live up to the moniker, the film like an R-rated girl version of a Ferris Bueller universe, the style heavy on sardonic, profanity-laced, in-your-face dialogue and flashy color schemes with lots of onscreen text written in neon pinks and blues. It’s aggressive to say the least, but fortunately, the leads themselves are well cast and embrace the hyperbolic state with some flair, even if they dress up in generic personalities.
In school, minor things can seem like immense uncrossable gaps and in such a closed environment, can lead to devastating loses and reasons for friends to drift, yet here it’s never all that clear why these girls ended up as they do, the film superficially addressing some home issues and problems as well. That’s not much of problem though because the movie is much more interested in being wild, with Marisa and Annie going on a small crime spree in a cartoonishly made up car with a couple of cartoonishly made up cops looking to wreck the lives of any teen they come upon. With no lack of effort, the movie simply doesn’t have any depth and we have no reason to get behind these girls, something any movie like this absolutely depends on. This isn’t a total loss, with a few funny moments and plenty of energy from the two leads, it’s just a mixed bag of hits and misses that feels unfinished and all too hung up on style than substance.