Film / Moxie

Vivian: If you just keep your head down, he’ll get bored and move on.

Lucy: Nah, I’m gonna keep my head up, high.

Moxie is a 2021 film starring Hadley Robinson, Lauren Tsai, and Alysia Pascual-Pena. Directed by Amy Poehler, it was based on the novel of the same name by Jennifer Mathieu.

Vivian (Robinson) is a typical introverted teen just trying to survive high school and keep out of the crosshairs of bullies and jerks. But after witnessing a new student, Lucy (Pascual-Pena), stand up for herself against the norm, Vivian begins to realize how awful normal is. After a dive into her mother’s memorabilia of her own rebellious teen years, Vivian is inspired to make some change, and Moxie is born.

Vivian writes an anonymous pamphlet she dubs Moxie, calling out the casual sexism and misogyny the female students put up with every day. While she initially sees it as a one-off to vent her own frustrations, the idea catches fire with the girls at school and Vivian finds herself at the center of a cultural revolution.

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This film provides examples of:

• Adults Are Useless: Principal Shelly fails to address bullying in her school, refusing to acknowledge the issue. She asks Lucy not to use terms like "harassment" or "bully" and shoos her away when she shows her social media list. She blames Lucy and Keira's supporters for not doing their job properly after Mitchell's fake victim speech on air.
• All Men Are Perverts: Implicitly discussed. Most of the boys in Vivian's school are sexist and royally degrade and harass the girls, making Vivian fed up when no action is done to call it out. The film makes clear that it isn't all the boys; Seth is one of the good ones, but the perverts stand out. Also, the old guy in the copy shop who copies Vivian’s zine is not (see Cool Old Guy below) and Vivian’s mom’s boyfriend John is presented as a good guy.
• As Himself: The Linda Lindas are a real-life band who perform at the Moxie party in the middle of the film.
• Becoming the Mask: Vivian is a shy introvert who creates Moxie as a feminist movement without having to talk to people. By the end, she lets go of the zine and speaks in public about the problems girls are facing.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: The school principal explicitly states that if Mitchell is "harassing" Lucy then she has to do a lot of paperwork and take action, whereas if he is only "bothering" her then she can handle it delicately (i.e. ignore it completely). She rephrases the conversation into Lucy claiming that Mitchell is only bothering her and sweeps it under the rug.
• Blessed with Suck: The girls who are ranked on 'The List' for their physical attractiveness hate how it sexualizes and demeans them. They are often singled out based on these features, and even punished by the school administration.
• Callback: Lisa puts an arrangement of leeks in a vase on the table as if they were flowers when John comes to dinner. It serves as a cute callback to their flirting in the grocery store.
• Celebrity Paradox: Claudia mentions a Mean Girls costume. That film starred Amy Poehler as Regina’s mom while in this film she portrays Vivian’s mom, Lisa. She’s a much better mom this time around.
• Cool Old Guy: The copy clerk where Vivian prints Moxie. After one print job, he yells after her, “Smash the patriarchy!”
• Cool Old Lady: When they hold a Moxie party at the VFW center, Helen, one of the old women playing mahjong cheers her support when Lucy talks about how they are bringing down the mediocre, old white man.
• Cool Teacher: Mr. Davies functions as a slight deconstruction. He seems to honestly mean well, but he is too set in his ways to really connect with or understand his students, especially those who challenge the established white male curriculum. He eventually realizes that his best way to help is to support the students as they challenge the system.
• Country Matters: After Lucy stands up to Mitchell she finds a new category has been added to the list just for her, "Biggest..." something that nobody wants to say.
• Curse Cut Short: A soundtrack variant. "Kitana" plays in the background when the girls do their tank top protest, but it stops when Vivian sees Claudia isn't wearing one, right before the song drops the f-bomb.
• D-Cup Distress: Kaitlynn, a girl who wins "Best Rack" by boys, struggles with insecurity and is sent home for wearing a tank top. Despite being left alone, she eventually stops shameful about her body and confronts harassers due to her breasts.
• Deadpan Snarker: The copy clerk gets in a good one:
  Vivian: [holding up the first Moxie] I’m gonna need a shit-ton of these.
  Clerk: How many is that?
  Vivian: [Beat...] Um, fifty?
• Dirty Coward: Several people accuse Vivian of being one as things start to get out of hand. When consequences start happening for Moxie, Vivian stoutly refuses to reveal herself as the mastermind behind it. This leads to people like Claudia taking the fall. Instead of coming forward or reining it in, Vivian actually escalates into theft and vandalism, which could really get her fall guys in trouble.
• Disappeared Dad: Lisa appears to have been raising Vivian solo for a while now. The two times her father is mentioned is when Vivian, in a tearful breakdown, asks Lisa why he doesn’t want to spend Christmas with her this year, and when she tells Seth she attended his wedding.
• Double Standard:
  • Called out: Kaitlynn is publicly sent home by Principal Shelly for wearing an inappropriate tank top, despite other girls and boys also wearing it. Despite her argument that it's only "against the dress code" because of her large chest, Shelly dismisses it.
  • The girls' soccer team is actually a winning team, including going to the state championships in the last year. However, the boys' football team gets all the attention and financial support from the school... even though they lose every game during the film.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After Kiera loses the scholarship to Mitchell, Vivian drinks the entire bottle of celebratory champagne by herself as she walks home, crying.
• Everyone Has Standards: Implied by the end. Principal Marlene Shelly, a mix of Dirty Coward, Adults Are Useless, and Slave to PR, punishes Moxie members and singles out female students, defending male mistreatment. However, when she discovers that Mitchell raped a girl, she starts taking proper action.
• Education Mama: Claudia’s mother comes from a strict Asian background and is determined for her daughter to have the best life possible for the sacrifices she made. Her suspension from school is serious business for her. She might as well have robbed a convenience store at gunpoint.
• First Kiss: During the VFW party, Amaya and Lucy kiss on the dance floor. They each seem thrilled that the other feels the same way.
• Foreshadowing:
  • After Vivian advises Lucy to “just ignore” Mitchell’s taunting and harassment, Lucy responds that this kind of behavior is often a prelude to worse stuff. This turns out to be completely correct, as Mitchell has raped at least one girl before.
  • Emma seems highly uncomfortable with Mitchell’s sudden appearance in the news studio. She vacates her chair for him and scurries off like a scared animal. At the end of the film, we find out she was upset upon seeing him because he raped her a few months prior.
• Former Teen Rebel: At first, Vivian is amused to find her mother was a protest-attending rebel feminist. It becomes a huge source of inspiration for her own rebellion.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Discussed. Vivian calls out Seth for being friends with someone as awful as Mitchell. He counters that he’s just used to him because they’ve been friends since first grade. Vivian points out how weak of an excuse this is. Seth quickly distances himself from him after that.
  • This is also Bradley's entire role in the film. As the team mascot, he struggles with football jocks and hosts a party at his house. He breaks his arm and asks the team not to high-five him too hard. Emma, his co-host, is tired of his lame puns and sycophancy; he brings Mitchell on without telling her, which is revealed in the climax.
• Funny Background Event: On the first day of school, Mr. Davies has two sheets of paper tacked to the whiteboard. They read “You Matter” and “Don’t Give Up.” But the way he has them placed side by side, it can be read “You don’t matter. Give up.” Towards the end of the film, he has moved the second paper underneath the first, fixing his meaning and signaling his awakening and support for the female students.
• Got Volunteered: Lucy nominates Kiera for the athletic award in the middle of a school football game, without checking with her first. Since it comes with a $10,000 scholarship Kiera isn't that put out, and is quickly persuaded by the other girls that it's something she wants too.
• Hate Sink: Mitchell Wilson is a misogynistic, arrogant, irredeemable rapist pig who uses his popularity to treat the girls at school as terribly as he wants.
• I Got Bigger: Vivian and Claudia notice that “Seth the Shrimp” has really blossomed over the summer, having grown a foot according to Vivian and become very handsome.
• Insult Backfire: Mitchell and Jason wear their reverse list titles like badges of honor. When Mitchell’s locker gets plastered with the asshole stickers, he grins as he peels them off and puts them all over his shirt.
• Jerk Jock: Mitchell and his friend Jason. No matter how much the rest of the school comes around, these two keep their heads firmly up their asses and continue to dump on the girls around them.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Mitchell. There's nothing redeemable about this guy at all.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Mitchell enjoys much privilege due to his star athlete status and mostly uses it to act like an ass with no consequences. Turns out the buck stops at rape.
• Lesbian Jock: Amaya doesn’t get much characterization outside of being on the soccer team with Kiera and her eventual relationship with Lucy.
• Love Interest: Seth for Vivian. John for Lisa.
• Lovable Jock: Kiera and her best friend, Amaya.
• Male Gaze: When the list goes out, Kaitlynn looks up from reading she has the “best rack” to notice people are staring at her chest. She zips her hoodie up in humiliation.
• Manifesto-Making Malcontent: Vivian expresses her anger through publishing Moxie and anonymously distributing it to the girls at school.
• Manipulative Bastard: Mitchell.
• Marital Rape License: Mitchell and Emma were boyfriend and girlfriend when he raped her, and this is one of the things that made it so hard for Emma to talk about it or expose him. She doesn't know how to accuse him of rape when they were a couple at the time of the assault.
• Meaningful Background Event: Towards the end of the film, Mr. Davies has moved the poorly-placed motivations signs on his blackboard from horizontal to vertical, changing the unintended message of "You don't matter. Give up." to the more helpful "You matter. Don't give up."
• New Transfer Student: Lucy is new at the school, although this is downplayed since she comes in at the start of a new year instead of joining in the middle. She rocks the social status quo by not letting Mitchell push her around, while everybody else has either been cowed into submission or ignores it because of how long they've known him.
• Nice Guy: Seth is just an overall nice person. After Vivian notices how much he grew over their summer break, but doesn't want to admit to Claudia that she is now attracted to him, she tries to talk up how he is nice to everybody.
• Not Me This Time: Lucy is the first person in a long time to challenge Mitchell, including reporting him to the principal for his harassment. Because of this, he assumes that she must be the one behind Moxie and doesn't accept any of her denials.
• Oh, Crap!: Vivian’s reaction when Claudia is suspended for the stickers. The others don’t understand what the big deal is, but Vivian knows how badly Claudia’s mother is going to react due to being very strict.
• Open-Minded Parent: Lisa encourages Vivian to find her voice and reminisces about her own activism with her. When Vivian has her breakdown and shouts all the things that are currently going on for her, she mentions how she's about to be suspended and is also considering having sex. Lisa is only upset to hear she may get kicked out of school and focuses on that; ignoring how her daughter is considering sex. Vivian is actually mad this doesn’t get a rise out of her.
• Parent with New Paramour: When Vivian realizes her mother is dating John, she instantly turns hostile towards him.
• Parental Fashion Veto: When Claudia tries to take part in the tank top protest, her mother catches her on the way out of the house. She rails at her in Chinese for it and sends her upstairs to change.
• Post-Rape Taunt: Emma being voted “Most Bangable” is revealed to be this, as Mitchell (who is shown to be in charge of the list) had raped her shortly before its publication.
• Precision F-Strike: Vivian shouts “Fuck the patriarchy!”
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The letter from someone saying she was raped is the climax of the movie, prompting a walkout from all the girls in the school, and the reveal that it was Mitchell is what finally gets him his comeuppance.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Mr. Davies tries to skirt the line between keeping his job and encouraging his students to express themselves. In the end, he sides with the girls, giving his required speech about the consequences of participating in a walk-out, but at the end, holding up his hands to reveal hearts and stars drawn on his palms, the symbols of the Moxie movement.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Claudia explains to Vivian that she never did appreciate how her activism will negatively affect the people around her, especially when they're caught. She caps it by explicitly stating that Vivian is a coward who created Moxie because she was too afraid to actually take any risks herself.
  • Seth later gives one to Vivian, telling her that she's taking her anger out on people who've done nothing to deserve it, including him. He also notes the situation with Claudia, pointing out that Vivian is taking reckless action and then letting other people take the blame for it.
• Rebellious Spirit: Lucy isn’t about to let anyone walk all over her. Her determination and pride shocks Vivian out of her apathy.
• School Clubs Are Serious Business: The vote on "student athlete ambassador", which sends an athlete from the school to an event later in the school year, comes with a $10,000 scholarship and is decided solely by popular vote of the student body. When Lucy nominates Kiera against Mitchell, the vote also becomes viewed as a referendum on sexism, given that Kiera leads a winning team while Mitchell is the quarterback of a — at best — mediocre football team.
• School Club Front: To prevent the administration from taking down all the Moxie signs and posters as 'vandalism', Claudia registers it as an official school club so they are allowed to put up notices. She also says they may have to learn chess.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Mitchell's status as the star quarterback grants him seemingly total immunity from the school authorities, who actively sweep his transgressions under the rug and even explicitly state that it's because he's the quarterback. It finally collapses when he is exposed as a rapist, and the principal finally takes action against him.
• Shout-Out:
  • Lucy's first scene is talking about The Great Gatsby in class, and questioning why it is still taught instead of other literature that may be more relevant.
  • Claudia talks about how she once planned to wear a Mean Girls Halloween costume, but in the end chickened out and went as a ghost. This is also a reference to the episode "Halloween" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Willow originally planned to wear a revealing costume but then covered it up by dressing as a ghost.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: The three 'winners' of The List resent that they are sexualized and singled out because of their bodies.
  • Kaitlynn ("Best Rack") covers herself with a sweatshirt immediately after "winning" because she notices that everybody is staring at her chest. Later, she is sent home by the principal for wearing a tank top despite other people wearing the same top.
  • Kiera ("Best Ass") is insulted that her athletic training and sports skills are only appreciated for how they make her body look. Additionally, it's racist since black women have historically been sexualized specifically for their butts and hair.
  • Emma ("Most Bangable") was raped by Mitchell and is now being told her body is all she's valued for and the only thing guys appreciate about her. During her speech to everyone about her rape, she specifically points this out and how hurtful it is.
• Smug Smiler: For the vast majority of the movie, Mitchell. There are a couple of moments when he's not grinning (see Spiteful Spit) but for the rest of the time he's incredibly pleased with himself.
• Spiteful Spit: When Mitchell harasses Lucy at the vending machine and she refuses to back down, he caps it off by taking her can of soda and spitting in it. This is what prompts Lucy to go to the principal and report him for harassment.
• Teens Love Shopping: Vivian and Lucy bond over a shopping montage.
• Their First Time: Vivian and Seth are about to have sex in his car. However, Seth stops because, while he definitely wants his first time to be with Vivian, he doesn't want it to be a rush job to make it on time to a football game.
• This Means War!: A soft variation; after Kiera is nominated for a stipend Mitchell is after, he starts to attack Moxie.
• Token Minority: While the cast is quite racially diverse, there is only one trans character (CJ) and one disabled character (Meg), who don't have much of a significant role in the plot besides talking about their experiences.
• Trans Tribulations: CJ joins Moxie because she is fed up with being misgendered and referred to by her dead name by teachers and students. She longs to do things like act in the school play but is afraid to make herself a further target by drawing attention like that.
• Victorious Childhood Friend: Seth and Vivian have been friends since first grade just like many of their small-town classmates. At the beginning of the school year, Vivian realizes how much Seth has grown up. That combined with what a genuinely Nice Guy he is, she develops feelings for him and they become a couple before long.
• Wham Line: Vivian finds an anonymous letter addressed to Moxie, asking for help after being raped.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: By the end of the film, Mitchell has done truly despicable things and been awarded a $10,000 scholarship. Principal Shelley arrives to take him out of class to her office, and nothing more is seen of him. Given the way she's handled things previously though, this could amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist. He deserves to be kicked out of school, stripped of his scholarship, arrested, tried and imprisoned; but none of this is shown. Nor does the eventual fate of the scholarship that Keira always deserved get resolved.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Both Lisa and Seth are disgusted with Vivian’s behavior at dinner and her verbal attack on John. Lisa chews her out immediately and Seth refuses to speak to her for several days.
• Wild Teen Party: Vivian and Claudia attend a Hawaiian-themed one. They eventually slip away and have the first impromptu meeting of what would become the Moxie club.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: The boys at the school put out 'The List' every year where they rank all of the girls, predominantly based on their physical features. "Most Bangable", "Best Rack", and "Best Ass" are regarded as the 'best', but the recipients resent being sexualized and singled out.