The DUFF (2015)

I'm a masochist. That's the only explanation I can come up with to justify me watching teen romcoms. Most of these movies are pretty shallow, clichéed and predictable, and The DUFF falls exactly into that category. However, this one wasn't that bad. It was kinda fun, to be honest. 

After finding out she is the DUFF which stands for designated ugly fat friend, Bianca (Mae Whitman) cuts all ties with Jess (Skyler Samuels) and Casey (Bianca Santos), her prettier and more popular friends and asks Wesley (Robbie Amell) help to reinvent herself and finally find the gut to ask her crush (Nick Eversman) out.

Basically, it's the typical story of the non-hot girl who tries to change herself so that the others will like her while losing her best friends who eventually falls for the guy she was not supposed to fall for. A "twist" I saw right from the beginning. Moral of the story? Pretty much the same of every teen movie, stop looking for other people's approval and embrace who you really are. But it also shows that we should live in the moment and not take life too seriously.

What bothered me the most about The Duff was the lack of character development. The story would have tremendously benefited from that as it would have given us characters to empathize with. Another problem is that there's nothing more than stereotyped characters. And most of them don't even have a role in the story.

That being said, the film was engaging and fun to watch and the credits go to Mae Whitman. She played the role very well with enough charm, wit and humour to keep me interested and entertained. She was a miscast though. How is she not beautiful?! Ken Jeong was good too as Bianca's teacher and Robbie Amell wasn't as terrible as his brother (watching Arrow is a torture). Actually, he was quite charming and his comedic timing wasn't bad.