Have you ever heard of the movie You Again? If you answered no, I wouldn’t be surprised. Yet this movie was set up for success, yet nobody remembers or has even heard about it. Which is sad considering how many underlying messages are mature and rich to know about. Before reading this please remember that this will contain spoilers to the 2010 movie.
You Again was one of those movies that had so many famous people it was almost guaranteed to succeed. With actors such as: Betty White, Kristen Bell, Victor Garber, and even Dwayne The Rock Johnson. The movie starts off with the main character Marni, portrayed by Kristen Bell, talking about her high school life. It shows her as an insecure teenager getting heavily bullied by the popular cheerleader Joanna, played by Odette Annable, with the only person she feels safe with. It then shows her successful, happy, and secure in her life- even getting a promotion. And now she’s flying back home to support her brother for his wedding. Only one problem, she finds out the woman he’s marrying is Joanna, her old bully, who instead of apologizing just pretends she never knew Marni and is like a whole new person.
The movie has a lot of petty fights in it, with Marni’s mom even having a long term hatred towards Joanna’s Aunt Ramona because of highschool. The movie is amazing for portraying different characters and their internal and external conflicts. For Marni it’s having to deal with her 4-year-long bully marrying her brother and her desperate desire for an apology from Joanna.
Throughout the movie it painted Joanna in a picture of a woman who was faking being nice to Marni while still forever hating her. While yes, some scenes suggest that Joanna was like this but with all good writing it’s not face forward. Something people often forget when watching movies like this is that it’s in Marni’s perspective. So the way Joanna seems to the audience is portrayed that way because that’s how Marni sees her. The consumer has no idea if Joanna was always planning to be rude to Marni after meeting her in the future. For all we know she truly could be nice and turned mean we know none of this until the fridge scene, in which she admits she was trying to be nice, truly, but found it awkward to bring up.
And that, that one little scene solidified what the movie was truly about. While yes it is a comedy movie about someone’s old bully marrying their brother, the actual point of the movie is forgiveness, communication, expectations, and most importantly the consequences of someone’s actions. Though it’s completely reasonable why Marni would want an apology from Joanna and Marni is rightfully upset about the arrangement, she completely goes about it in the wrong way. Instead of proper communication she lashes out trying to expose Joanna, which makes Joanna really lean into being mean and cruel to Marni again.
After Marni again and again tells Joanna she just wants an apology and Joanna’s pride gets in the way, the breaking point is Marni exposing Joanna at the wedding party a day before the wedding. This completely destroys the tension that had built up between the two girls, completely destroying their relationship and Joanna’s marriage. It shows just how destructive and physically brutal both girls can be, and for their own separate reasons. Marni is upset because she’s always been easily pushed around and didn’t get the apology she expected. Joanna is upset because Marni ruined her image in front of her husband and started the kindle for their fight.
This small detail in the story really shows people’s warped perception of expectations. Positive expectations of future events are something that will always lead to disappointment. When you set expectations of what will happen to you- that can completely destroy perception on people. Subconsciously when we expect things to go our way we often twist them, the foundation of these beliefs. And the foundation is built on very systematic tactical things, giving the person who had made them a false sense of reality so when this unrealistic reality isn’t met a person will often ask for more. This is what happened to Marni. She did have a justifiable reason for them, but it gave her a want that could never be met, always wanting a better and bigger apology from Joanna. This is seen all throughout the movie. She asks Joanna to apologize, Joanna apologizes but it’s not enough for Marni- this also maybe because to Marni it felt ingenuine. The second time Joanna is asked to apologize she does again, bigger than before. But still Marni isn’t satisfied. She has built up this want and thought that when she gets her apology it has to be big, it has to be raw, and it has to acknowledge every single action she did wrong. In fact it is only till Joanna has a complete mental breakdown and apologizes that Marni finally accepts it.
As for Joanna’s expectations they are the same idea just in a different way. Instead of wanting and expecting clarity from her highschool experience. She wants Marni to just pretend like none of it happened. Again this is extremely damaging to both Marni and her, seeing as she struggles with being a good person. Unlike Marni who believes proper forgiveness is the way to solve things. Joanna prefers forgetting, acting as if something never happened. This may be caused by a lot of internal beliefs but I think a huge part of it is that she feels it is easier to play dumb and disassociate the past self with her present self. Making a belief in her mind such as “If I’m good now it doesn’t matter what I was like in the past” or “We can forget the past and focus on the present and good parts of me.” Making an unrealistic assumption that Marni would be fine with it and agree to forgetting the past, even though Joanna had an emese hatred for Marni in the past.
While Joanna and Marni are fighting a fight also breaks out between Romonda, played by Sigourney Weaver, and Gail, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. In the beginning of the movie it was evident that the two women had tension stemming from high school. But it was never really explored completely, the only hints of their tension being from a sort of jealous overachieving tension. It only is revealed what happened between them when they start to get into a physical altercation outside of the party venue. Romonda completely breaks down because for years she’s had built up resentment towards Gail for being better than her. She completely got blind sighted by wanting to be better than her friend that instead of talking about it she grew distant and hatred towards Gail.
Objectively speaking however, Will, Marni’s brother and Joanna’s fiance suffered the most during the present day. In the beginning of the movie he wants to help Marni but she won’t let him. When he gets engaged to Joanna and Marni comes to the home, Joanna acts like she’s never met Marni. Whether intestinal or not Joanna is manipulating Will, making him believe even further that Joanna is an angel. The pre-wedding party just brings all that manipulation down. Not exposing it privately but instead publicly humiliating him as a person. The video showing Joanna bullying Marni in highschool and in general being a bad person; must have been suffocating. Not only did he feel completely deceived by Joanna making him feel like he doesn’t even know who she is anymore. Unlike all the other characters he makes his emotions and feelings completely known from the beginning. Making the film even more realist in ways people handle things.
You Again is a film that reminds people of the consequences of any of their actions. It is a movie that is both comedic but also teaching regal and raw lessons to the audience. And is a sad example of a movie that nobody knows about yet it should be.