Amy Bradshaw: Sara Foster
Lucy Diamond: Jordana Brewster
Max Brewer: Meagan Good
Dominique: Devon Aoki
Janet: Jill Ritchie
Bobby Matthews: Geoff Stults
Scud: Jimmy Simpson
Mrs Petrie: Holland Taylor
Mr Phipps: Michael Clarke Duncan
Ninotchka Kaprova: Jessica Cauffiel
D.E.B.S.,
which stands for Discipline Energy Beauty Strength, is a movie about high-school girls who become
secret agents whilst still dealing with the daily chores of a schoolgirl such as crap boyfriends
or whether to go to art school.
Any film about espionage is going to have its big baddie, and the one here is the unquestionably
unthreatening Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster, right with Sara Foster), a young woman who claims she can hold the whole
world to ransom but can't handle one blind date, which she attends early on with Russian hitwoman
Ninotchka Kaprova (Jessica Cauffiel).
Amy (Sara Foster) is writing a term paper about Lucy. Amy is also the only DEB to have a perfect score
in her SAT tests, part of which determines the students who wouldn't just succeed academically, but
as being a spy. Her colleagues are the feisty Max (Meagan Good, below-centre), the slightly dimwitted, and French,
Dominique (Devon Aoki, below-left) and prissy Janet (Jill Ritchie).
Any attempts at making a serious spy film can be quickly ignored as you'll see it's laughable the way
the D.E.B.S. mount a covert operation to view Lucy Diamond while she's on her date, and later when Lucy
makes an attempt to break into their fortified house.
Amy is placed in charge of the operation to capture Lucy Diamond, given her encounter early on with
Lucy where the everyone thinks she just came face to face, had a brief conversation and then she escaped.
Well, she did at the time, but only one of the girls knows of the lesbian tryst going on once it becomes
clearly that Lucy fancies Amy, despite the logistical reasons why their love can never be, although it
comes across as an Unrequited gay love, making it like Craig and Anthony from Big Brother all over again.
D.E.B.S. doesn't make any sense, and I can't really see who the lesbian storyline is meant to appeal to
other than, perhaps, the fathers of the kids they might've bought this for, and why didn't they arrest
Lucy when they tracked her down nearly an hour into the proceedings? However, this is an entertaining
movie overall.
Most of the girls are about 21-22 so could pass for the role in hand, but Geoff Stults, who plays Bobby,
is pushing 30 nearly and looks far too old to be onscreen, but then the same thing could've been said for
many of the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 in its heyday. There's also several scenes between Jordana
Brewster and Sara Foster (together in the bottom picture), but when they're facing each other while standing up how come their eyes meet
given the fact that their heights are 5'7 and 5'10 respectively?
It's quite forward for a 12-certified movie, moreso than I'd expect to see, or am I just
turning into an old fart? In fact, maybe the director has a thing for making lesbo movies, since she
also directed a 4-minute short in 1995, Chickula: Teenage Vampire.
Despite the fact it's total nonsense, I won't reveal the conclusion for obvious reasons. Does Amy stay
straight and go back to Bobby, or does she head off for lip-locking heaven with Lucy?
(and you know which kind of lips I'm talking about)
Absolutely no problems with the sound and picture. The print is an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen one, clear
as a bell throughout and also well-shot so while it'll no doubt get cropped to 16:9 on TV when the time comes,
it shouldn't as that'll do the framing of many scenes a great disservice. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound comes
alive when required too. Gunshots are one of the best features, with some occasional nice rear action going
on (oo-er, missus!) and some brilliant tunes booming out, namely:
Erasure's A Little Respect,
The Only Ones' Another Girl, Another Planet,
The Cure's Love Cats,
Goldfrapp's Strict Machine,
New Order's Temptation
and Death in Vegas' Girls, the latter also used in
Lost in Translation
as the opening theme when Bill Murray arrives in Japan.
Note that the Goldfrapp one also excels in the subwoofer department as well as the thud-a-rama that is the
Junk Pit, the underground bar where Lucy hangs out.
The extras aren't massive in number, but contain Infiltrating Debs (12 mins), a featurette in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen
in which director Angela Robinson, the key female actresses and other crew members talk about the
transition from comic book to movie and how the filming went overall. They mention the 11-minute short
film released in 2003, of which the only surviving actress was Jill Ritchie (Janet), but stupidly the
end result doesn't appear on this disc. I tried finding it online as a bittorrent but no joy as
no-one's seeding.
The Deleted Scenes (9 mins) are in 16:9 but look like they've been shot that way (and later matted
to 2.35:1 for the movie itself), but then at first it appears they're not 'deleted' deleted, they just throw
in a couple of minor edits into the scene I mentioned above that's an hour in. Four minutes in we actually
get proper deleted scenes, but none of them is much to worry about.
The remaining extras consist of a rather pointless Animatic (5 mins) where the SAT test part of the
film is extended and told with sketches, 23 pics in the Production stills gallery, an example of
the D.E.B.S. comic and three pointless Trailers. Why are they pointless? Because they're for
other films (Hitch, Spanglish, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle) and not this one. For those with
more time to spare there's Two Audio Commentaries, one from director Angela Robinson and the other
from actresses Sara Foster, Jordana Brewster, Jill Ritchie and Meagan Good.
The main menu is static with music, there are 28 chapters which is good for a comparatively-short movie
such as this and there are subtitles in a staggering 19 languages. The main three are English, Spanish and
Dutch as these also include subtitles commentary and 'hard of hearing' options, but the rest - too many
to list here - are movie-only.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
D.E.B.S.,
which stands for Discipline Energy Beauty Strength, is a movie about high-school girls who become
secret agents whilst still dealing with the daily chores of a schoolgirl such as crap boyfriends
or whether to go to art school.
D.E.B.S. doesn't make any sense, and I can't really see who the lesbian storyline is meant to appeal to
other than, perhaps, the fathers of the kids they might've bought this for, and why didn't they arrest
Lucy when they tracked her down nearly an hour into the proceedings? However, this is an entertaining
movie overall.
Absolutely no problems with the sound and picture. The print is an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen one, clear
as a bell throughout and also well-shot so while it'll no doubt get cropped to 16:9 on TV when the time comes,
it shouldn't as that'll do the framing of many scenes a great disservice. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound comes
alive when required too. Gunshots are one of the best features, with some occasional nice rear action going
on (oo-er, missus!) and some brilliant tunes booming out, namely:
Erasure's A Little Respect,
The Only Ones' Another Girl, Another Planet,
The Cure's Love Cats,
Goldfrapp's Strict Machine,
New Order's Temptation
and Death in Vegas' Girls, the latter also used in
The Deleted Scenes (9 mins) are in 16:9 but look like they've been shot that way (and later matted
to 2.35:1 for the movie itself), but then at first it appears they're not 'deleted' deleted, they just throw
in a couple of minor edits into the scene I mentioned above that's an hour in. Four minutes in we actually
get proper deleted scenes, but none of them is much to worry about.