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Honor Society: Angourie Rice Astonishes in Freshly Written Teen Comedy


So every so often a weird thing happens where two movies with very similar premises come out in the same year. 1998: A Bug’s Life and ANTZ, 2009: Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report, 2011: Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached. Sometimes it’s manufactured, sometimes it’s coincidental, but it’s always funny when it happens. And usually there’s a clear winner, in each of the aforementioned cases, the latter movie has been dwarfed in quality and popularity by the former.
2022 may not have an exact parallel to this, but I found two teen movies released to streaming services within a couple months of each other and that I’ve only caught up on now to be remarkably similar in key ways, yet still distinct enough and good -in fact they make for great companion pieces rather than comparative. They are Honor Society and Do Revenge, both high school movies that deal in preppy ambitiousness, manipulative machinations of revenge or self-interest, and feature particularly bold if similar twists. So I figured I should tackle both of them equally on this day in two connected reviews.
Directed by a seeming first-timer, Oran Zegman, Honor Society may be the first original movie for Paramount+ that I’ve heard of, a streaming service I’ve also only recently heard of. And I might have passed on it had it not been for its’ two leads, Angourie Rice and Gaten Matarazzo. Matarazzo of course, being a Stranger Things kid, I’m naturally interested in what kind of projects he’s taking on. But Rice especially is someone worth watching out for, and has deserved a showcase like this ever since The Nice Guys!
And it seems like whoever cast her for this movie was a fan of The Nice Guys, as her character Honor Rose is written to a similar level of adult intelligence mixed with sarcasm. As is a staple of teen movies, she breaks the fourth wall to narrate to the audience her situation, emotions, general commentary and plotting, filling us in with pithy attitude right from the start on the context: that she has spent her entire academic career working towards an acceptance into Harvard, so as to get away from her boring small town and otherwise mediocre prospects. It hinges on a letter of recommendation from her guidance counsellor (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who has singled her and three other students out as his final considerations. So she conspires to encroach on their lives, manipulate their interests and thus distract them from their academic work so that she can take the coveted prize.
It’s a biting and confident outing from Rice, who is exceptionally cynical, pious, and Machiavellian in the role as she works to erode the lives of her competition. Sharply written by Futurama and Family Guy scribe David A. Goodman, she has a ‘Girlboss’ energy about her that matches perfectly her sense of personal elitism. And yet she’s still humane for this, approachable and honest in small ways; Honor’s arc obviously revolving around her growing as a person and feeling empathy for those who, in the process of trying to derail their academic futures, she inadvertently makes their lives more whole. Like introverted “weird girl” Kennedy (Amy Keum) getting to exercise her creativity in producing the school play, and star athlete Travis (Armani Jackson) coming out to his crush.
Of course the one with the biggest impact on Honor is Matarazzo’s Michael -the quiet, bullied nerd whom she partners with for a science project in the belief she can manipulate his crush on her. It turns out not to be so easy though, as he’s more charismatic than he appears and genuinely shares similar interests and feelings with her. It’s a nice and cute dynamic that plays out, as Michael’s personality and personal situation more and more stirs Honor’s sympathies and forces her to confront her motives and character. It’s clear too that she’s lost something in being so stringently academic-focused for years -she has a pair of “friends”, but we don’t see them much, she clearly hasn’t felt attached to anyone. Only now is she experiencing that emotional humility, especially as she bonds more and more with Michael.
The movie has a very palpable John Hughes sheen to it; its’ plot, characters, and humour written to that same sharply construed sense of grounded emotion flanked by articulated absurdities of teenage ego. It’s not so consistently successful on the latter front, and does run aground of a few clichés, but it maintains a degree of that Hughes edge, notably in the unsettling sexual advances of Mintz-Plasse’s Mr. Calvin. Self-awareness cushions this though and indeed the prism of Honor’s point-of-view is a vital aspect of the films’ effects. It not only amplifies Rice’s talents and fleshes out the character through subtle shifts, but it also works as an important plot device -as it shields the audience from one of the movies’ key tricks.
Honor Society is one of the rare high school coming-of-age movies that features a twist, and a really strong one at that, that redefines the context of a lot of the action and consequent moral character of the piece. It’s not only a subversion of genre convention but it makes Honor’s character journey more complex and perhaps more substantial –lending her an even greater degree of agency as it breaks out of her objectivity and brings her down to an emotional low-point. It’s an excellent touch and my only objection is that aspects of the reveal itself (particularly how it chooses to revisit old scenes) are drawn rather awkwardly.
Indeed, the filmmaking does often hint at the inexperience of the director. Zegman is never particularly ambitious here, in spite of a number of things in the script that would invite creative cinematic interpretation. His artistic choices around things like Honor’s fourth-wall breaks or mental cutaways are typically safe and inoffensive glances to the camera or screen wipes, and the few times he tries for something genuinely different in a camera motion or the aforementioned use of flashback, it plays shabbily –as though he’s just figuring it out as it’s happening. Most of all it’s just a bit dull, the script and performances more relied upon to carry the movie.
Luckily where those qualities are concerned Honor Society is perfectly capable, and capable of surprising. Its’ main virtue is as an excellent showcase for Angourie Rice, but its’ touches of humour and heart, as well as bold storytelling choices are commendable too. With a few more resources pumped into it and a theatrical release, it would have been a movie still being talked about now I’m sure. Sitting there obscurely on Paramount+ does it a disservice. Hope more people will give it a watch.

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