She fell in love with her arch nemesis _ Amy & Lucy _ DEBS review

Dibbs is a 2004 low budget romantic comedy spy spoof that follows Amy , a recruit in a super secret spy academy with a perfect score who in the four years of training has along with her best friend , Max managed to become the darling of the academy , landing them in the most prestigious debs sorority .

Only something isn't quite right .

She's questioning her future as a spy .

We've been through four years of hell and our top squad , right ?

So you're not gonna ruin it all by going to art school .

You are always right as well as having just broken up with a hunky all American boyfriend of eight months , Bobby Bobby .

I'm like , I'm just not in love what I said .

I want to be in love .

Why are you yelling when the academy learns that the super villain , Lucy Diamond has come back to town who has tried to blow up Australia some years before and been responsible for multiple major money and art heists , Amy and her team are sent on a reconnaissance mission to spy on a meeting that Lucy has with a Russian assassin .

It seems they aren't the only ones hanging from the rafters to get the down low .

Everyone's here .

The feds , including her ex who can't accept that .

It's over when he demands a bracelet back that he'd given her as a gift , they fumble it and the bracelet falls into Lucy Diamonds soup setting off an epic shootout that culminates in Lucy and Amy coming face to face .

What Amy discovers is that Lucy wasn't meeting the Russian assassin for business rather it was a blind date , which means that Lucy is a Suffolk .

You were on a blind date , whatever that really torpedoes my thesis .

My thesis .

I'm writing a term paper on you .

Despite being arch nemesis , they hit it off and when Lucy escapes , she's convinced that Amy is into her .

And so she breaks into Amy's sorority house .

What are you doing here ?

I wanted to see you and it ends up with a reluctant Amy going out to a secret underground club where it looks like things might be heating up .

Oh my God .

But the problem is that Amy is a Deb and Lucy is a super villain .

How can they overcome this rather large sticking point so they can find true love .

This is a super silly lighthearted film that follows in the tradition of other silly movies .

Perhaps the film was also influenced by the classic , but I'm a cheerleader that also had a campy comedic tone , but perhaps it's closer to films like Charlie's Angels , Austin Powers and get smart .

It is however of a much more modest budget , which becomes amply evident with the extensive use of green screen that adds to the campy vibe of the film .

While this apparently put some viewers off .

Initially , over time , this film has grown into a bit of a cult classic for the suffix because of how silly and ultimately fun the movie is with a kind of queerness that didn't seem to lead to intense navel gazing to help the protagonist accept his sexuality .

The gayness was just there at the front and center of the movie without it being a big deal .

It was the beginning of green screen technology becoming better and a lot cheaper to use during the mid two thousands .

Here , I thought it worked well with the tone of the film to create an almost cartoony style aesthetic that makes me think of animations like Carmen San Diego and the spy kids franchise .

And in a similar fashion , debs offers up some fun spy tech and inexplicable ability to teleport a star Trek style to round out the look .

This aesthetic is probably due to the fact that this movie originated from the screenwriter , director and editor Angela Robinson , originally creating a comic strip out of the idea before receiving a 20 K budget to turn it into a short film that then led to this feature .

The film is essentially a romantic comedy at its heart and the spy elements are window dressing to create much of the humor , using the two leads desire to find love as a juxtaposition to what ought to be a serious business of being a spy in particular .

It helped undercut the high villainy of Lucy Diamond with how she was just a girl in search of another girl who could love her .

That is so not true .

I am .

Yes , she goes around stealing from banks replete with the comical dollar sign on the bags of money .

But really she's not all that bad .

When compared to other spoof movies , debs doesn't push the film to the extreme of ridiculous that other spoofs like say scary movie does .

But I liked that about it .

It left space for the characters to still be grounded without the need for larger than life performances .

And for the first half of the film , everything bubbled quite delightfully along giving me some good chuckles and the space to marvel at that low waisted mid-twenties wardrobe and ridiculous short skirts that honestly were a bit distracting because I kept expecting them to flush their undies about halfway through the film did start to lose steam .

However , because the plot was pretty thin on the ground , there wasn't any truly fleshed out subplot to help support the major storyline of Amy and Lucy meeting and falling in love .

And once it was clear , the two ladies were going to get together with only a few obstacles to slow things down .

The pacing of the film felt like it lagged the relationship between Amy and Max , which was only lightly touched on , could have been deepened into a fully fledged second thread to explore , but it remained pretty superficial to the point that I didn't really believe that they were best friends at all .

More like frenemies .

A plot twist in the second half also would have helped keep the plot humming .

I don't know , maybe Holland Taylor could have turned out to be the real super villain the whole time forcing Amy and Lucy to team up and take down an even bigger threat .

Instead , the scenes merely marked the progression to the evident end as welcome as that evident end was I still enjoyed it .

Don't get me wrong , but my mind did go a wandering .

And so while I delighted in the campy silliness of the movie , it didn't quite manage to hit a home run , which is a shame because it is still a pretty unique Suffolk offering even 20 years down the line and I am a fan of this genre .

I do love the very Campy Xena Warrior Princess after all , which if you didn't already know , I am in the midst of reviewing every episode on my Patreon exclusive video podcast called the Suffolk Warrior Podcast .

Or if you're not into that , I have exclusive videos and a Suffolk film and TV database to help you discover new content .

I'd love to hear what you thought about this film , love it , hate it , never seen it .

And until next time Lady lovers .