For me The Duff is that movie.
Though it has only grossed $31 million in it's 28 days of release, that's more than three and a half times the Lionsgate/CBS Films co-productions $8.5 million budget. I not only consider it my favorite movie of 2015 thus far but also the best movie I have seen in years.
Luckily I graduated from high school right before "cyberbullying" started. Yet anyone who was ever picked on in school would almost certainly resonate with the main protagonist and what she has to go through.
That protagonist is high school senior Bianca Piper, played by Parenthood's Mae Whitman (even if you have never seen Parenthood you most likely seen her before as the President's daughter in Independence Day). A cult-horror film fanatic, Bianca is not your typical high school teenager. One night Bianca and her two best friends Jess and Casey (played by Skyler Samuels and Bianca A. Santos, respectively) go to a party thrown by reality-show wannabe and Queen B of the school Madison Morgan (Bella Thorne) who views people like Bianca as inferior to her.
During the party, Bianca runs into her much despised next-door neighbor Wesley Rush (Robbie Amell), Madison's boyfriend and a star on the school football team, who explains to her that she is Jess and Casey's "Duff"-their "Designated Ugly Fat Friend", the friend who is not as popular or attractive as her friends, therefore making her the person can ask questions about them before making their move.
This revelation turns Bianca's whole world upside down. In addition to having a falling out with Jess and Casey after finding out that she is their "Duff", Bianca reluctantly enlists the help of Wesley to make her less "Duff" like in exchange for helping him pass chemistry so she can win the heart of her guitar-playing crush Toby Tucker (Nick Eversman). In one of the comedic moments of the film, Bianca and Wesley head to the mall, where she tries on new clothes and pretends that one of the manequins is Toby, confessing her love and pretending to make love to it. This gets secretly filmed by one of Madison's friends, gets uploaded on YouTube, and causes the entire student body to make fun of Bianca.
The scene where she cries in the school restroom is one of the very few times I have sympathized so deeply with a character on film. Although I graduated from high school in 2007, a time when high schoolers didn't have smartphones and the term "viral video" didn't exist, like Bianca I was picked on for being "weird" or "different", for not being a "normal" person like everyone else. It is the kind of experience that feels like hell at the time but that makes you a stronger person.
Wesley tells Bianca not to let the video get to her and be straight up to Toby about her feelings for him. I'm not going to say what happens next because it would spoil the whole movie, but I will say there a few surprising twists and turns in the last half hour or so of the film.
Major props go to Whitman, who essentially helped carry the entire film and not only made the character of Bianca fun and enjoyable but also someone you can root for. If director Ari Sandel had chosen a less capable actress the movie might have ended up being boring as hell. Liking The Duff rests entirely on liking the character of Bianca, and Whitman does such a superb job of making the character likable that you end up wanting to watch her journey on screen. Though Whitman has been mostly under the radar save for people who have watched Parenthood, she has the capability and potential to be a leading comedic actress in the vein of Tina Fey and Melissa McCarthy.
The Duff will not end up being one of the top 10 grossing movies of 2015 or even the top 100 grossing movies of 2015. Upcoming blockbusters like The Avengers: Age of Ultron will certainly surpass the films entire domestic gross in just one day. But if you've ever been made fun of for being quirky or different, seeing The Duff while it is still in theaters is an experience worth having.
