Thoughts on Foxfire

I watched Foxfire, I hadn’t seen it in ages. I thought it was pretty good, though I preferred how the novel was set in the 1950s instead of the film’s then-present 1990s. The novel is about a teenage girl gang, and it felt more transgressive and badass to have a 50’s girl gang than a 90’s grunge one.

I thought the gang conspiring to fight back at a lecherous teacher happened way too early in the movie, like 15 minutes in. It felt very rushed to me, like they just set up the jerk teacher, Angelina Jolie is the new kid in school, and right afterwards she leads a new gang of girls in the bathroom to take revenge on him. It just happened way too fast and needed some room to breathe in between.

While I prefer the novel, because I felt like the time setting put more at stake, I did like the movie. Jolie was absolutely perfect as the heroine, as the loner rebel type, and Hedy Burress likely should have had a bigger career, she was really grounded and likable as the level-headed Maddy. I also thought it was sweet to hear the early singing talents of Jenny Lewis in one scene, and ridiculous how two white actors were cast to play the parents of half-Japanese Jenny Shimizu.

The music sent me into a bit of a time warp, because they threw in a lot of 90’s grunge and Riot Grrl in it. Like L7’s “Shirley,” about a famous race car driver, plays in a car scene with the girls singing along. And I cringed at hearing a Candlebox song that I absolutely hated back in the day, and still found the singer’s voice grating.

So it was nice to watch, more of a very dated 90’s girl movie that feels more in common with The Craft, but isn’t as well-remembered.