How do you think you’d fare if you learned that your high school tormentor was engaged to your brother? What’s worse, the fact that she pretends she doesn’t know you or the fact that your brother could not care less to remember who made your life a living hell? These are questions that are essentially, danced around in You Again. Laced with an ensemble of stars, past, present, and future, You Again is a comedy film that tackles this concept.
Marni Olsen (Kristen Bell) is an awkward teenager in 2002 who spends her days relentlessly bullied by J.J. (Odette Yustman, better known today as Odette Annable). Her older brother Will (Jimmy Wolk, better known today as James Wolk) is oblivious to all this. How that’s even possible is, quite frankly, ridiculous. As the big game comes to its dramatic conclusion, Marni costs them their victory (never mind that J.J. pushed her and caused the whole scenario).
Flash forward eight years, and everything has changed. Marni has become a successful P.R. executive, is transferring from her company’s L.A. office to New York, and is about to head home for her brother’s sudden wedding. It’s only as Marni is on the plane that she learns that the wonderful Joanna she has heard all about is her high school bully, J.J., and the firm, stable foundation that she has built for herself begins to crumble, and she ends up briefly detained by the Air Marshal on her flight. This is where the comedy aspects are at its best because the war between Marni and Joanna is amusing to watch at times.
On the other hand, we soon realize there is more to this drama than meets the eye. Gail Byer Olsen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Ramona “Aunt Mona” Clark (Sigourney Weaver) have an equally contentious, albeit less vitriolic, history. The dichotomy between their experience and Marni and Joanna’s is where the story truly highlights its best side. While Joanna was unambiguously a bully and a tormentor to Marni, Gail was simply an accomplished student, of which Gail was envious and resentful. At no point in their time at high school did Gail actually bully Ramona. Ramona’s feelings towards Gail are much more complex and rooted in traditional rivalry. Gail overshadowed Ramona, but she wasn’t vindictive. Gail and Richie Phillips (Patrick Duffy) went to prom together, but he wasn’t Gail’s to steal, as he asked Gail himself. Compare this to every interaction between Joanna and Marni; the differences are more than simply stark. They’re downright cruel.
While this film is interesting in how it tackles bullying and trauma and how much it can ensnare a victim’s mind and life for years, no matter how much they might change, it also focuses on one truly abhorrent truth about bullying. Nobody cares. Not really. Throughout the vast majority of the film, Joanna is relentless in her efforts to remind Marni of her place and all the horrible things she did to Marni. Joanna never feels remorse or guilt before she is exposed for her past. Joanna states that she did, but one has to wonder how she ever thought she could get away with pretending that she did not remember a girl she terrorized every day for four years.
On the other side is Marni’s family and their handling of the situation. I can forgive her parents, Gail and Mark Olsen (Victor Garber), for being unaware of the problem. Children can be withdrawn and awkward; getting them to open up with you is not always easy.
But then there’s her brother Will. I’m sorry, but how are you so completely unaware that this girl led the entire school, or at least a large portion of it, into physically carrying your little sister through the main hall and locking her outside of it. Was he so uninvolved in Marni’s life at school, which they attended together for two years, that he was completely oblivious to her suffering? It’s shown that he cares and protects her, but how was he unaware of what she was going through? With his best man being one of the few people to be nice to Marni during school, it beggars belief that Will never knew that J.J. was a bully to Marni.
This comes to a head when Marni finally manages to get just a bit of revenge against Joanna. She is talked down to and berated by her brother and treated as if she is just as culpable for the situation as his fiancé is. With how Will treats Marni in this instant, after watching the entire Olsen family lavish Joanna with love, attention, and care, is it any wonder that Marni would be willing to go to such lengths just to expose Joanna for the cruel person she is? One can’t even state “the cruel person that she was” because Joanna seemed to pick up the cause as if she never let it go.
How You Again resolves this plot is another testament to how love can impact a person’s decision-making ability. Love is not a light switch, and even though Will discovers something terrible about Joanna, he cannot just turn off his feelings towards her. For Marni, forgiveness is something that needs to be earned. While she may have been petty towards Joanna throughout the film’s crux, it’s impossible to say that it was undeserved retribution. One thing we often hear is that the onus of forgiveness is on the victim. Yet, the only reason this film has a happy ending is because Joanna grew into a person deserving of forgiveness. At least, that’s what the story will have you believe. It’s a good time, but it is flawed in that regard.
The entire situation is more tragic because Joanna has genuinely changed. It makes me wonder why she initially insisted on ignoring the problem. She clearly loves Will; he indeed loves her, and the rest of Marni’s family has embraced her wholeheartedly.
Now that she’s a nurse, she has gained compassion and perspective and built herself into a better person. All Marni asked for was an apology, and when Joanna wouldn’t give it, Marni began her plan.
Joanna’s response can’t even be called “in kind.” After all the damage she caused, there was little that Marni could ever do to measure up to that level of cruelty. This is where Marni’s flaws come in. She couldn’t let go of the past, and now that she had grown a spine, she was no longer a meek, helpless victim. Cue the war.
Betty White and Kristin Chenoweth feature in major supporting roles, the former as Grandma Bunny Byer and the latter as the wedding planner Georgia King. Their comedic moments are aplenty, and Chenoweth even shows off her dancing ability during her introduction. Tim (Kyle Bornheimer) is introduced as Joanna’s ex-fiancé, whom she left at the altar and part of one of Marni’s plans to sabotage the wedding.
While Chenoweth may not have much screen time in You Again, she certainly doesn’t waste a moment of it. The theatricality of her role comes out wonderfully, and her commentary on what’s going on is always enjoyable.
We also have Charlie (Sean Wing), Will’s best friend and the one person who was genuinely nice to Marni in high school as Marni’s potential love interest. Dwayne Johnson briefly cameos as the Air Marshal. Even if he’s not credited, there’s no mistaking him.
You Again is not lacking in comedy. It handles some of its themes in a questionable manner, but that does not make it a bad film. There is grace in forgiveness, and it was nice to see that Marni withheld hers until she knew, beyond all doubt, that Joanna was deserving of it. This also acts as a warning against filming oneself impulsively. Joanna’s downfall was due to a vicious video she filmed for their high school’s time capsule, which wasn’t supposed to be opened for fifty years. Who we are in high school is not who we will always be, and it is difficult to reflect on ourselves accurately when it is so easy to distort the memory of the past. Committing yourself to something as permanent as film with cruel, vindictive statements can haunt you.
You Again is a good film, proving that a good story can have flaws. I enjoy stories like this because we are all flawed. We espouse motivations and statements that might fly in the face of reality, common sense, or even common decency. It takes time to grow and change, and You Again has the grace to show that it can be true.
Lloydd Marshall Books 