Asking For It is about a young lady who oops accidentally falls in with a crew of radical militant feminists out to take revenge on predatory masculinity, frat boys, and human traffickers.

It’s a film that never really commits to being what it wants to be and fails to be a host of other things that maybe it should have been. It wants to be a militant feminist and anti-racist rallying cry but it’s too wishy-washy and ultimately mainstream for that. And if it thinks its the serious-minded dramatic analysis of toxic masculinity or radical feminism, it just isn’t. It’s not good enough, smart enough, or dramatic for that.

So maybe it should have been the demented anarchistic or even outright exploitation fun version of the story… but it tap-dances up to that line and then says “nah.”

The film’s failure to launch is evident in some really flaccid pacing and abrupt, poorly executed editing. Whenever the movie gets close to being something explosive or intellectual or deep, it just turns into a wet noodle. You think it’s going to be introspective analysis of gender and race, but no, it messes up it’s chance to go deep. You think it’s going to be kicking against the patriarchy, but no it just kind of winds up adhering to normative standards like good (if angry) citizens.

The film sets up one of those reactionary anti-feminist, anti-woke, anti-SJW, pro-masculine, pro-white speakers who thinks anyone he disagrees with is a beta cuck. Aaaaand then we get a whole other villain to boo and hiss at… and then we kinda/sorta circle back around to the first baddie for a poorly edited and weird finale. I don’t know if they had trouble with Ezra Miller (he’s having quite a bad time these days) or if the script really was this wishy-washy and unfocused.

I wanted to enjoy this movie on any number of different levels instead of the non-committal shrug of a route they took. I wasn’t bored with it, but I was wildly impatient. I just wanted it to commit to something.

Score: 71