Strike!

It's a low-brow teen coming-of-age movie! No, it's a serious message movie about female empowerment! Wait, kids, it's both! Strike!, a flabby and fairly embarrassing bit of teen comedy, manages the neat trick of being simultaneously exploitative and pretentious. Gaby Hoffman, Kirsten Dunst, Heather Matarazzo, Monica Keena and Merritt Wever star as a quintet of students at a New England all-girl prep school circa 1963 who set out to thwart the merger of their fine institution with an all-boy academy. Every once in a while, someone will pause to make a heartfelt speech about how girls are kept down by co-education or the need to challenge a pre-ordained fate of domesticity. And shortly thereafter, writer/director Sarah Kernochan will use bulimia, exploding contraceptive foam or tag-team vomiting for comedic effect. There are some appealing performers in Strike!--including Lynn Redgrave in a nice turn as a sympathetic headmistress--but the film wanders all over the map in search of a cheap laugh: a lecherous male teacher wearing a dress, a group of annoying boys who photograph road kill, etc. Even if you happen to agree with the message that adolescent girls can only find their true voices in a single-sex setting, you'll wonder why the film had to undercut its point with so many cheap and easy detours. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)