neshasouthport-1 I was pretty excited for this movie when I heard it was coming out soon and watched the trailer. But it seems all the funny and good parts were put in the trailer. So, the movie wasn't "all that" for me. Had a lot of great actors and actresses like Jessica alba and Samuel Jackson.

SnoopyStyle Megan Walsh (Hailee Steinfeld) is 83. She, Heather 84 (Sophie Turner), and other girls are trained to be assassins by Hardman (Samuel L. Jackson). She grows tired of her work and pines to be a regular high school girl. During an operation to capture Victoria Knox (Jessica Alba), she escapes and pretends to be an exchange student from Regina, Canada. Her host family is a divorced mother (Rachael Harris), snarky teen Liz Larson (Dove Cameron), and little boy Parker. All she knows about high school is from teen comedies which gets her into trouble. Both hunky musician Cash Fenton and AV nerd Roger Marcus take a liking to her.This has a few IT girls on the rise. There are a surprising amount of talent, both kids and adults, in a silly teen movie. It does try to subvert the teen movie tropes. It's just weird that it does it in a childish style. It struggles to find its true voice. It's both sincere and sarcastic. Steinfeld is sincerity incarnate. The set up is stupider than Spy Kids. It's an awkward blend that fails to be compelling. The only compelling aspect is that one roots for Hailee but this is stupid and not in a fun way.

jimbo-53-186511 Prescott is a top secret government agency that turns orphaned kids into super assassins. One of the kids known as Agent 83 (Hailee Steinfeld) craves to have a normal life and do everything that normal kids do. After a botched mission to take out prolific arms dealer Victoria Knox (Jessica Alba), Agent 83 sees an opportunity to break free from Prescott and enrols in a student exchange programme and moves in with the unsuspecting Larson family. Agent 83 or Megan Walsh as she becomes known as begins to lead a new life as a 'normal' kid, but finds herself ostracised due to her 'weird' ways. Walsh struggles to adjust to her new life are worsened by the fact that the head of Prescott's known as Hardman (Samuel L Jackson) is looking for her with the intention of getting her to leave her normal life and return to Prescott's.The opening 5-10 minutes of this film held a lot of promise and the idea of a kid being a super assassin wanting to lead a normal life certainly looks good on paper, but the weaknesses in the film are in evidence from a very early stage....Before I start I would like to say that I have ticked the 'spoiler' box to cover myself, but in all honesty anyone who has seen a handful of teen films will be able to predict pretty much every scene in this film. Weird girl joins a school, becomes an outcast because of her weird ways, falls for the most popular guy in school despite the fact that a less popular guy who she has more in common with worships the ground that she walks on. Weird girl starts to become popular realising that the popular guy isn't all that and ends up falling for the less popular guy who is actually more interesting and who genuinely likes her. Does all this sound familiar? Yes that's because it is mostly a re-tread of Clueless. In fact the filmmakers actually show clips from the film Clueless and even recreate the Suck & Blow game that we saw in Clueless. This can either be looked upon as Homage or a Rip-Off but given the fact that it seems so obvious in what it's doing here I can only assume that these scenes were perhaps intended as a homage.This lack of originality brings about further problems such as in other areas where the filmmakers directly quote from other teenage films such as Mean Girls and The Breakfast Club. It actually references these films direct and worse still uses quotes or scenes from these films in order to convey character emotions. It's almost like the writers couldn't come up with their own ideas here and just decided to steal ideas from other films. The Clueless example I gave was something I could pass off as Homage, but The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls examples are clearly just ripping off those films.Barely Lethal also tries to be a hybrid of a spy adventure/action film and a coming of age teen dramedy and whilst it is perhaps possible to meld these two concepts together this is not really something that the writers have been entirely successful at here; the 'spy' or Prescott aspect of the story is barely given any focus and seems to clumsily drift in and out of the story whenever it seems to be convenient. They capture Victoria Knox, but then she escapes - quite how she escapes is never explained and doesn't seem important to the writers??? Then she rocks up at the Larson family home to take out Agent 83, has a scuffle with Agent 83 and gets killed when Hardman and his men arrive to save the day. It's a disappointing finale made worse by the fact that Jessica Alba isn't very convincing and seems miscast as a villain here. Although part of the film is about Hardman trying to track down Agent 83, it isn't played out in a way that is particularly exciting and Hardman seems to find Agent 83 far too easily. At one point Agent 83 says to Hardman 'How did you find me'? and Hardman says ' You Tube' OK unless the video contained specific details of the school such as its name and address I'm unsure how you could trace someone from a You Tube video??? The thing that makes this film more tolerable than it should be are down to some of the performances; The likes of Hailee Steinfeld, Dove Cameron and Samuel L Jackson all help to make this a better film than it should be (particular praise going to Steinfeld who I thought was excellent). It's themes about struggling to gain acceptance for being different will always be relevant and again do give the film some worth.However, when the chips are down, I couldn't help but feel that I'd seen a lot of this before in Clueless and for the record Clueless was also a much better film.

KineticSeoul So watching this movie was like watching a episode of a Saturday morning live action show, except with a slightly higher budget. A premise like this has been done before, except much better. So the plot is about a teenager that grew up training at a very young age to be a elite agent. But wants to live the normal teenage life by going to a normal high school so does her homework by watching teenage movies. Then gets to live with foster parents...Thing gets very predictable from there on. The thing is the whole thing is silly and just seems like something made for 10 year olds or younger. There really isn't much reason to watch this movie when movies like "Kingsman: The Secret Service" and "Kick-Ass" is out there. This film is about a hour and 30 minutes long and it was painful to sit through. If you are 10 or younger and this movie just comes on TV for free it might be a okay watch but for the rest, just pass on this one. It even has one really crap chase scene that is better off not watching. The only reason I decided to give this movie a chance was because of the cast. But are just wasted and it's a wonder why they decided to take up these roles.3.5/10