Rebel Wilson’s directorial debut The Deb takes place in a small town in Australia, where a big city girl finds herself tackling an archaic tradition of the patriarchy, a debutante ball, while trying to support her small-town cousin’s dream of finally attending the annual event.
The Deb
Rebel Wilson (director and writer), Hannah Reilly (writer), Meg Washington (story), Ross Emery (cinematography), Jane Moran (editor)
Rebel Wilson, Shane Jacobson, Tara Morice, Natalie Abbott, Charlotte MacInnes, Julian McMahon, Hal Cumpston, Stevie Jean, Costa d’Angelo, Steph Tisdell, Scarlett Crabtree, Susan Prior (cast)
September 14, 2024 (TIFF)
In The Deb, a rich, young girl, Maeve (Charlotte MacInnes), is unceremoniously sent off to Dunburn, a small town in Australia, to spend some time with her cousin, Taylah (Natalie Abbott). Dunburn is exactly as one would picture a small town in the outback—rustic, old-fashioned, and full of weird wildlife appearing in the worst places.
Maeve is being punished by her mom, the school principal at her exclusive private school, for staging a protest against their uniform. It’s weird that I’ve watched two films at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (2024) this year where a young girl makes a statement by flashing her entire class. This is a weird trope to reappear in coming-of-age films. Please tell me it will go away soon because unfortunately, in both films the flashing has negative consequences for the girls.
Once the cousins are reunited, they realize how much the other has changed since they were last in touch. Maeve is the epitome of perfection and an aspiring TikTok influencer, touting feminist values at any given moment. Taylah is the Mayor’s daughter, naive, gullible, and obsessed with finding a date so that she can attend the Deb, the debutante ball that Taylah has been dreaming of attending, just like her mother once had. But, Taylah is a farm hand—she’s big and strong, perennially dressed in loose-fitting plaid shirts and comfy jeans. She’s a far cry from the popular mean girls in town, the Pixie Cups, led by Annabelle (Stevie Jean). This trio of girls are hot and haughty, breaking into suggestive dance numbers on cue. How will Taylah get someone to like her enough to accompany her to the biggest night of her young life?
The reason I went to watch The Deb was because there was a fat character in the promo picture. I’ve never been a fan of coming-of-age romantic comedies because, barring Queen Latifah playing the leading lady in a couple of rom-coms in the 90s and Whoopi Goldberg’s comedic turns in the romance-adjacent films I grew up watching, the only people Hollywood ever presented as deserving of love were always statuesque white women. The genre has been trying to diversify a little more off late, and Rebel Wilson has been part of that change. With The Deb, she takes her talents behind-the-scenes to make an engrossing and funny musical adaptation that celebrates differences and the bonds we build.
The Deb, at first, seems like every other teenage romance story: an outcast tries to find love. But if you’re worried about this being a boring, backwards, heteronormative slog, The Deb will surprise you. Yes, the film has a bunch of tropes in it, including mean girls, makeover scenes, silly fights, and the woes of technology, but these are hallmarks of the genre. The film takes chances by going beyond those tropes which made for memorable moments. My favorite part of the film was when Taylah gets co-opted into playing a sport with the boys. It was unexpected—girls never seem to play sports in films unless that’s the subject matter. I laughed so hard at that scene. I wanted more of that. Much of the film teeters on the edge of being the same-ole, same-ole, not least that the skinny white girl gets all the attention and a conventional storyline, while Taylah has an uphill battle to fight and still doesn’t get the ending we expect. However, The Deb also tries to subvert some of our expectations—the story isn’t about finding love, it’s about finding and loving yourself. The film attempts to thread the needle of enjoying things that may seem outdated to some, but are precious parts of everyday life for people in a small town. And, it also discusses looking beyond the now, beyond what the world is telling you to do, to live life to the fullest, especially since the characters are literal children. Don’t settle is a good message that I wish had been clearer in the story.
A fair warning: The Deb is a very Aussie film–people swear like it’s going out of fashion, and if you’re put off by some of the curse words they use, you’re going to have to steel yourself to the fact that Aussies do not give a shit. I was not perturbed and laughed hard at most of the scenes. This film can be irreverent at times, and I’m here for that!
But one thing bothered me about the film–there aren’t a ton of characters of colour here. Now, I don’t know the census of Australia, but I can wager that there have to be more people of colour at a private school than the one Asian mean girl and a couple of ambiguous girls of colour we see. And, even in Durburn, we needed more people of colour. I also couldn’t help but notice that in the mean girl trios, the Asian girls didn’t get long solos–the white girls did. There’s also some amount of rapping in the songs which annoyed me since there were no Black characters in the mix.
I also wish there had been a few more fat characters in the film. Taylah is big, but it’s obvious she’s packing some muscle under there because she does manual labour on the daily. The secretary, Dimity (Steph Tisdell), is nice and fat, but that’s it for the plus-size characters. At the TIFF screening I attended, Rebel Wilson and Stevie Jean, who plays the main antagonist in The Deb, Annabelle, came on stage to chat about the film. Wilson and Jean both said that at the audition for her character, pretty much every girl there was blonde and a Margot Robbie look-alike. But they went with Jean for the role, and Jean thanked Wilson for choosing a ‘curvy’ girl, which is hilarious to me. Simply not being Hollywood thin is sadly enough to make Stevie Jean consider herself curvy? But yes, she does have a slightly different build from the rest of the cast, so I’m glad Wilson and her team chose Jean for the role. The whole movie would have otherwise been filled with thin girls and Taylah.
And, I can’t get over the fact that we don’t have a single classroom scene in the small town. Do any of these kids go to school in Dunburn, or is their lack of worldly knowledge a result of no schooling? This was an odd choice, considering the opening song sequence is set in the private school.
Speaking of the music, the songs are catchy and evocative, and I was definitely tapping my toes to a few of them. The music is by award-winning Australian musician and songwriter Meg Washington who wrote the lyrics with The Deb playwright Hannah Reilly. Some of the lyrics were drowned out because of the sound system (a recurring problem for me this TIFF), so I missed a handful of the jokes, but there wasn’t a bad song in The Deb. Are they memorable? I don’t think so. I can’t remember any of the tunes a few hours after watching the film. The only song that felt out of place, and self-indulgent, was the one led by Rebel Wilson’s Janette. Her voice isn’t as strong or melodious as that of the rest of the cast, and the sequence was overlong.
The performers are all stellar, and given that the majority of them are first-time actors, the cast are stars in the making with their ability to sing, dance and act. I’m certain the conventional-looking actresses will make a splash, but I hope Natalie Abbott also gets her due. The actors blossom under Wilson’s direction which is as playful as the script. She captures the energy of a musical with long-takes and wide shots, but also throws in a few gimmicks, like shooting the duet between Maeve and Taylah as a split screen and a faux TikTok music video in the vertical screen one would see on the app. Wilson’s long career in the industry is evident in The Deb, and alongside cinematographer Ross Emery and editor Jane Moran’s handiwork, the film looks fresh and is well-structured. I’d like to see Wilson in the directors’ chair again.
The Deb is a fun and funny teenage coming-of-age story that will bring joy to many girls and hopefully send them the message that life has only just begun, so you don’t have to settle for what’s in front of you. And that being pretty isn’t the only thing you need to strive for.
