Day: March 3, 2015

Movie Review: The DUFF

Posted March 3, 2015 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments

Bianca is a content high school senior whose world is shattered when she learns the student body knows her as ‘The DUFF’ (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) to her prettier, more popular friends. Now, despite the words of caution from her favorite teacher, she puts aside the potential distraction of her crush, Toby, and enlists Wesley, a slick but charming jock, to help reinvent herself. To save her senior year from turning into a total disaster, Bianca must find the confidence to overthrow the school’s ruthless label maker Madison and remind everyone that no matter what people look or act like, we are all someone’s DUFF.

After discussing movie reviews with Holly, we decided that we’re going to start reviewing the books that were turned into movies here on Book Binge and this is the very first movie review that I’m going to write.

Over the weekend I took my niece Makaela out for her birthday and she wanted to see this so I rallied up the troops and we made the 4:40 showing at our local theater. I thought the theater would be a lot more crowded than it was and that surprised me because the other teeny bopper books turned movies had bigger crowds than this movie did.

I read the book before watching the movie so I already knew that the movie was going to be different (you can tell from the movie trailer just how different the book was from the movie) so I wasn’t expecting to like the movie as much as I did the book but I did.

Bianca has two gorgeous and popular best friends in Jess and Casey. They’re into fashion and they’re hot stuff but they love Bianca so she never really paid much attention to how much more gorgeous they are than she is until her next door neighbor, Wesley Rush calls her their D.U.F.F.

DUFF stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend and Bianca isn’t at all happy that Wes has enlightened her on her DUFF status. This status bothers her so much that she obsesses over it and she goes through the five stages of grief throughout the movie. You know, denial and sadness and anger and well, you get the idea. The only way that she thinks she could get over her obsession is to reinvent herself and who does she go to for help?

Wesley Rush, of course.

Wesley needs help passing science so they agree on a swap (after Bianca asks in Monster voice, ha!) of services and the movie really takes off.

I really enjoyed the movie. I thought it was cute and fun and every single kid that I took to see this movie agreed with me. They loved it. They thought it was hilarious and immediately after the movie, they were trying to figure out who the DUFFs were in their circle of friends. They all wanted to be the DUFFs too, which I thought was funny.

The casting of the characters was pretty great, IMO. I adored Robbie Amell as Wesley Rush (and so did every single girl that went to see the movie with me) and I thought that Mae Whitman was a great Bianca. Madison was a new character (not from the book) and she was a great villain because I wanted to punch her every time she released a video that embarrassed Bianca and I wanted Bianca to punch her every ten minutes (at least). Ken Jeong and Romany Malco had me cracking up every time they came on screen and overall, it was just a fun movie.

My favorite scene in the movie was probably the scene where Bianca shows Wes her Think Rock. That whole scene had me cracking up because, well it’s a good scene. You’ll just have to take my word for it..until you watch the movie yourself. 🙂

I will definitely be getting this movie on DVD and I’ll probably watch this one every time it comes on cable.

Grade 4 out of 5

Movie Trailer

This movie was released by CBS Films. I bought my own ticket to see this movie in the theater with my kids.

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Tagged: 4.0 Reviews, CBS Films, Contemporary, movie reviews, Rowena's Reviews, The DUFF, Young Adult

Review: The DUFF by Kody Keplinger

Posted March 3, 2015 by Rowena in Reviews | 3 Comments

Rowena’s review of The DUFF by Kody Keplinger.

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn’t think she’s the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She’s also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her “the Duff,” she throws her Coke in his face.

But things aren’t so great at home right now, and Bianca is desperate for a distraction. She ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it. Eager for escape, Bianca throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with him.

Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out Wesley isn’t such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she’s falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone.

I read this book right before the movie came out in theaters because, well, that’s just something that I like to do. I finished the book and thought it was pretty good. The difference between the movie and the book was that the movie focused more on the label DUFF than I thought the book did. The book, to me, was more of a contemporary YA romance between Wes Rush and Bianca Piper and that’s fine. I enjoyed their romance.

So this book follows Bianca Piper as she tries to deal with problems at home. Mainly, her Mom being away for a long time and her Dad struggling with trying to stay sober when the love of his life (her Mom) wants a divorce. Bianca isn’t equipped to deal with her Dad’s alcohol issues and what she feels at first as her Mom’s abandonment so to escape her problems, she jumps into a f*ck buddy relationship with the school man-slut, Wesley Rush. The guy that called her, The DUFF.

I call it a f*ck buddy relationship and not a friends with benefits relationship because Bianca HATES Wes. She hates that he’s a man-whore and she hates pretty much everything about him but when she kisses him and then continues to kiss him and then sex him, it allows her to escape everything that waits for her at home. So she does him every chance that she can and in between all of the sex (there’s a lot of sex in this contemporary YA book), they get to know each other and as much as Bianca wants to fight it, she develops feelings for Wesley and that screws her all up because her real crush, the guy that she absolutely loves? Toby Tucker? Yeah, he starts showing interest in her.

For a DUFF, she sure did get a lot of action in this book. Ha.

This book was well written and it was mature (what with all of the casual sex being had throughout the book) but still a lot of fun. Bianca was a great main character with a very likable voice (even when she was getting on my nerves) and I thought that Wes was a total dick but he completely grew on me as the story wore on. It was a quick read and it was a lot of fun too. I liked it but if you watched the movie and want to read the book, don’t expect the same story because you aren’t going to get it.

Grade: 4 out of 5

This book is available from Poppy. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.