“Empire Waist” is a laugh-out-loud teen comedy about a girl’s emotionally fraught journey from making herself “invisible” to accepting who she is and embracing attention from her peers.
Claire Ayoub’s debut feature is witty but utterly predictable, uplifting in all the right ways, manipulative in many others. Characters are a checkbox of political correctness and incorrectness, with mean girls and a mom who wants to “understand,” but just can’t without help.
What all that adds up to is good-hearted and damned adorable.
Mia Kaplan (TV’s “SMILF”) gives a sympathetic performance as the poetically-named Lenore, a teen of dressmaking skill and creativity who hides all that from the world because she’s been conditioned to fear mockery.
Polite people might call her “curvaceous,” “zaftig” or “plus-sized.” But Lenore’s in high school, where those words aren’t in any classmate’s vocabulary, and where the lure of cruelty is instinctive.
Her exercise-obsessed realtor-mom (Missi Pyle, terrific) is no help, passing on grandma’s motto, “People judge your body before they judge your body of work” and drops “Remember what the nutritionist said” into too many conversations.
At least Dad, a graphic designer who taught Lenore the basics of design and clothing construction, is cheerfully supportive. He’s played by Rainn Wilson, who brings “Juno” energy to the family vibe.
What perpetual outsider Lenore needs is a lab partner, her teacher (Jolene Purdy, delightful) decides. And pairing the wallflower up with the “huge” and owning it Kayla turns out to be a life-changing/school changing moment of inspiration.
Kayla, taken amusingly over the top by Jemima Yevu in her screen debut, is a force of nature — confident, quippy and cocksure in her own skin. And before we and Lenore realize that she also has inner pain she’s wrestling with, Kayla has bowled her, us and everybody else in school over.
“You kinda dress like a widowed mall walker,” she snaps, noting Lenore’s Edgar Allen Poe black-on-black attire. Lenore may be bitterly afraid of everything about her appearance, but on seeing her classmate’s designs and Singer skills, Kayla isn’t having it.
“I declare the right to BARE ARMS!”
Lenore dresses Kayla. Kalya turns heads in the halls. That triggers the queen bee mean girl (Isabella Pisacane, who even looks like young “Mean Girl” Rachel McAdams) and fat-shaming (“It’s a PUBLIC SERVICE!”) backlash. But it also sets in motion the two of them finding their “Island of Misfit Toys” tribe — the wheelchair-bound Marcy and “future queer icon” Marcy (Daisy Washington), the towering transgender Tina (Holly McDowell), diminutive Diamond (Kassandra Tellez), labeled “slow” but actually “brilliant,” and soon others.
Because mean girls and their mean beaus and moms who just don’t get it can’t keep a plucky, talented teen down.
Yevu dominates the picture, stepping into the spotlight and speaking out for millions when Kayla declares “‘Fat’ isn’t a bad word.” But it can be “just in the minds of people who think it makes you less of a person.”
Of course there’s a big fashion show competition, with mean girl obstacles one and all must overcome to get Lenore into it to show off her riotously colorful “Empire Waist” (“always flattering”) couture.
Ayoub may have built her script on a formula, but the characters are never caricatures and up and down the line, they bubble to life. From Lenore’s sympathetic but wrongheaded mother to Kayla’s “old ways” chattering Haitian granny, the dizzy mean girl (Tabyana Ali) who figures it might be time to change tribes to the school nurse (Abra Tabak) who treats injuries physical and psychological, they’re just plain fun.
That goes for the movie, too. We know where it’s going. But it’s comforting to remember that characters with good humor and good intentions will never let the haters win, not in any feel-good movie worth its salt.
Rating: PG-13, profanity, sexual situations
Cast: Mia Kaplan, Jemima Yevu, Missi Pyle, Daisy Washington, Kassandra Tellez, Holly McDowell, Isabella Pisacane, Jolene Purdy and Rainn Wilson
Credits: Scripted and directed by Claire Ayoub. A Blue Fox release.
Running time: 1:34
