You Again (2010)

On the spectrum of contemporary social consciousness, You Again arrives at the table like a bottle of 2010 Pinot Grigio left in a warm car: harmless, faintly sweet, and entirely of its moment. Andy Fickman's comedy concerns Marni, a public relations executive who learns that her brother's fiancée is the girl who tormented her in high school. The cast is white to a person, and the film never notices. No character registers as anything other than heterosexual, and the question of orientation never arises because it never occurs to the screenplay. Race is not a subject. Climate is not a subject. Money appears in the form of a wealthy aunt who pays for a wedding, an arrangement treated as a convenience of plot and not an indictment of capital. There is a scene of a bride weeping into a cake while still in her wedding dress, played for sorrow and never for self-acceptance. Nobody is coded as neurodivergent, no historical record is revised, and the twentieth century passes unmentioned.

The film does center women, which is not the same as advancing them. Three generations of actresses circle each other through old grudges, and the engine here is female rivalry resolved by female reconciliation. That structure drew little goodwill at the time. The New York Times called the picture a rancid, misogynistic revenge comedy, and it is difficult to argue with the assessment. Centering women while asking them to behave badly for ninety minutes is not a program. It is a casting decision.

What remains is a light sermon on bullying and the possibility of change, delivered without a pulpit and without much conviction. Joanna apologizes. Marni forgives. The film proposes that people can grow. This is agreeable, mild, and heavily sugar-coated, a moral offered the way a host offers a second slice of cake, expecting no one to refuse.