So Undercover is a 2012 action-comedy film directed by Tom Vaughan and written by Allan Loeb and Steven Pearl. It stars Miley Cyrus, Jeremy Piven, Josh Bowman, Kelly Osbourne and Megan Park.
Molly (Cyrus) is a young but streetwise private eye who an FBI agent (Piven) hires to go undercover at a college sorority. Posing as 'Brooke', a rich girly girl Molly has stick close to the daughter of an important member of the Georgian mafia who has turned informant for the FBI.
Very much a Spiritual Successor to/Younger and Hipper version of Miss Congeniality.
So Undercover provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Molly packs a mean punch.
- As You Know: Done very awkwardly early in the movie when another character explains Molly's backstory... while talking to her.
- Becoming the Mask: Molly eventually becomes at least as interested in helping out her sorority as in protecting Alex.
- Big Bad Friend: Armon is really the Big Bad.
- Brainless Beauty: Dear God Cotton (though see Genius Ditz below)! Taylor has shades of this too, though not to the same extent.
- Cassandra Truth: Molly (as Brooke) is chatting with her roommate Becky about how they got into the sorority.Becky: So, how did you get into Kappa?
Molly: The FBI arranged it.
Becky: You're funny. - Dumb Blonde: Played with. Ditzy Cotton is a classic Dumb Blonde but Taylor is pretty vapid too and is a Raven Hair, Ivory Skin beauty while Sasha is as blonde as they come and pretty sharp.
- Gender-Blender Name: Nearly all the girls in the sorority (Alex, Cotton, Hunter, Taylor even 'Brooke'.) The exceptions are the two outsiders, Molly and Becky.
- Genius Ditz: Cotton is a total airhead in everything except chemistry in which she is quite, quite brilliant.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Becky using a Texan accent for all on one line. And then she immediately declares she's not using that accent but she'd worked on it all last year.
- Red Herring: Professor Talloway, Sasha and Nicholas at different points. The first two are hiding something Talloway is FBI, Sasha was an ugly unpopular kid in high school while the third was framed by the real villain.
- Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Megan Park (Cotton) is noticeably absent from the poster despite having more screen time and lines than Kelly Osbourne (Becky) or Eloise Mumford (Sasha).
- Even more noticeable is Lauren McKnight (Alex), the girl Molly is supposed to protect.
- Tomboy: Molly before She Cleans Up Nicely.
- Totally Radical: Subverted. Molly has to be tutored in lingo like "amazeballs," resulting in her saying "Your balls are amazing" by mistake.
