THE DEB is a throwback of a musical comedy executed to perfection by director Rebel Wilson. It has a mid-century heart and a modern sensibility combined seamlessly into a rollicking good time that isn’t afraid to drop the F-bomb. Based on the Australian stage play, it makes its transition to the big screen without missing a beat and with a little writing help from Ms. Wilson, who also co-stars as the stage mother from hell.
We are in the small and very dusty drought-stricken town of Dunburn, Australia where Taylah (Natalie Abbott) has spent her young life dreaming of the town’s one big event, The Deb, a debutante ball where the local girls don beautiful dresses to come out to society. Or what passes for it in that locale. Taylah is a good-hearted girl who cheerfully feeds the pigs and takes care of the other farm chores for her widowered father, Rick (Shane Jacobson) as visions of tiaras dance in her head. Unfortunately, she is self-described as fugly, and the constant target of local mean girl, Annabelle (Stevie Jean) and her two acolytes Danielle (Brianna Bishop) and Chantelle (Karis Oka). Despite the put-downs and cruel tricks, Taylah remains a cockeyed optimist about The Deb changing her life and about being able to find the required date to escort her to the event in a town where all the boys have ignored her.
Into this quandary arrives Maeve (Charlotte MacInnes), Taylah’s city cousin and performative activist fresh from being expelled from her fancy girl’s school for going too far during a protest that went viral. The two seem to have nothing in common, but in classic musical comedy fashion, bond as each discovers there is much to learn about and from the other, and that alcohol-infused teenage parties in abandoned houses rarely end well.
Subplots abound without cluttering up the story. There is the awkward attraction between Rick and the uptight spinster, Shell (Tara Morice), who runs The Deb as though it were a holy ritual. There is Annabelle’s mother, Janette (Wilson), who has her own dreams of making her daughter a superstar and escaping the ennui of her life as a small-town beautician. There is Dusty (Costa D’Angelo), the impossibly pretty local guy who challenges Maeve’s jargon-rich pronouncements by simply being himself. Rather than dwell on the admittedly rich possibilities of Maeve being a fish out of water, discovering, among other things, the eccentricities of rural plumbing and transportation, the story quickly moves into the meat of the story where everyone in this town sees The Deb as the solution to each of their problems. Even Maeve, with a podcast plan that goes badly awry.
It starts with the first of many high-energy production numbers, this one with rich girls complaining about their over-privileged lives with entitled exasperation. These musical interludes each serve to move the plot along at a sprightly pace as characters muse about their inner lives and in the case of “Spotlight” deliver genuinely moving monologues about their disappointments and dreams. The songs are great and so is the dialogue, which is punchy and impudently risqué without being egregious. It also takes the time to build characters rather than caricatures, aside from Wilson, who lights things up with a steady stream of hyperbolic narcissism as, with a straight face and absolute sincerity, she chides someone for using up all the oxygen she needs for her cigarette. In delightful contrast, Abbott and MacInnes take characters who come of age and of wisdom to aethereal heights, stumbling, re-calibrating, and finally arriving at their epiphanies without a sudden shift, but rather a gradual expression of leaving immaturity behind a little at a time. Broad or complex, these are performances that resonate and delight.
Beyond all that, THE DEB takes aim at the culture with wry wit, from local dynamics to governmental oversights. More than just a lavish entertainment, and it is certainly that, it has a message about self-acceptance and self-analysis that doesn’t lose itself in pomposity or vitriol.
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