Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Columbia TriStar
- Cert:
- Cat.no: CDR 35892
- Running time: 88 minutes
- Year: 2004
- Pressing: 2005
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, Spanish
- Subtitles: 19 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Infiltrating D.E.B.S, Deleted Scenes, Animatic, Production Stills Gallery, D.E.B.S. Comic, Trailers
Director:
- Angela Robinson
(D.E.B.S., Herbie: Fully Loaded, Short: Chickula: Teenage Vampire, D.E.B.S.)
Producers:
- Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin and Mike Richardson
Screenplay:
- Angela Robinson
Music:
- Marco Beltrami
Cast:
- 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 becomesecret agents whilst still dealing with the daily chores of a schoolgirl such as crap boyfriendsor whether to go to art school.
Any film about espionage is going to have its big baddie, and the one here is the unquestionablyunthreatening Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster, right with Sara Foster), a young woman who claims she can hold the wholeworld to ransom but can’t handle one blind date, which she attends early on with Russian hitwomanNinotchka Kaprova (Jessica Cauffiel).
Amy (Sara Foster) is writing a term paper about Lucy. Amy is also the only DEB to have a perfect scorein her SAT tests, part of which determines the students who wouldn’t just succeed academically, butas 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 waythe D.E.B.S. mount a covert operation to view Lucy Diamond while she’s on her date, and later when Lucymakes 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 withLucy 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 becomesclearly that Lucy fancies Amy, despite the logistical reasons why their love can never be, although itcomes 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 toother than, perhaps, the fathers of the kids they might’ve bought this for, and why didn’t they arrestLucy when they tracked her down nearly an hour into the proceedings? However, this is an entertainingmovie 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 formany of the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 in its heyday. There’s also several scenes between JordanaBrewster and Sara Foster (together in the bottom picture), but when they’re facing each other while standing up how come their eyes meetgiven 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 justturning into an old fart? In fact, maybe the director has a thing for making lesbo movies, since shealso 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 staystraight 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, clearas 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 comesalive when required too. Gunshots are one of the best features, with some occasional nice rear action goingon (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 Temptationand Death in Vegas‘ Girls, the latter also used inLost in Translationas 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 theJunk 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 widescreenin which director Angela Robinson, the key female actresses and other crew members talk about thetransition from comic book to movie and how the filming went overall. They mention the 11-minute shortfilm released in 2003, of which the only surviving actress was Jill Ritchie (Janet), but stupidly theend result doesn’t appear on this disc. I tried finding it online as a bittorrent but no joy asno-one’s seeding.
The Deleted Scenes (9 mins) are in 16:9 but look like they’ve been shot that way (and later mattedto 2.35:1 for the movie itself), but then at first it appears they’re not ‘deleted’ deleted, they just throwin a couple of minor edits into the scene I mentioned above that’s an hour in. Four minutes in we actuallyget 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 thefilm is extended and told with sketches, 23 pics in the Production stills gallery, an example ofthe D.E.B.S. comic and three pointless Trailers. Why are they pointless? Because they’re forother films (Hitch, Spanglish, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle) and not this one. For those withmore time to spare there’s Two Audio Commentaries, one from director Angela Robinson and the otherfrom 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 moviesuch as this and there are subtitles in a staggering 19 languages. The main three are English, Spanish andDutch as these also include subtitles commentary and ‘hard of hearing’ options, but the rest – too manyto list here – are movie-only.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.