The DUFF is a new high school/teen comedy out now in theaters. It’s a cute and chuckle-worthy teen romantic comedy about a girl who realizes she’s the less attractive, more “approachable” one in her friend group and she gets angry about that. It’s a self-aware high school flick that makes smart references to past such movies, tells a fairly predictable but funny story, and manages to be really adorable.

This aught to be a star-making performance by Mae Whitman… the lead actress. She’s winning and throws all of herself into the movie without any apparent ego. She is really charming and the movie is smart enough not to have cast an obviously super-attractive actress who can have a predictable Swan moment in a She’s All That kind of way. I’m not saying she’s ugly, I’m saying they cast a cute actress to play someone cute – not a hot actress and put her in coveralls and glasses because that automatically makes you ugly. I hope that makes sense.

I suspect the movie will have more meaning to its target audience – I thought the ultimate message that everyone is a DUFF at some point in their life was done better in other movies (I’m looking at you Romy and Michelle). But that’s just me having seen too many such movies.

I laughed out loud a few times, I chuckled quite a bit, and found it otherwise really predictable but charming.

Score: 81