HONOR SOCIETY (2022)

HONOR SOCIETY (2022)

Tagline: Getting to the top means taking down your competition. 

(Drama, Young Adult, Downer) [PG-13]

Note: This movie was released directly to Paramount +, so it didn’t get an MPAA rating, but I think it would have been a PG-13. 

In this one, a girl named Honor is desperate to get into Harvard when it becomes apparent that she is up against some other competition against 3 other students she feels she needs to take out of the running by distracting them from getting good grades. 

First off, the preview for this thing is misleading as hell. It makes you think that this is going to be a fun little comedy mostly centered around Honor played by Angourie Rice (SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING) and Michael played by Gaten Matarazzo (STRANGER THINGS). Instead, we get a movie that only has a few scenes with those two and most of those are in the preview. This is a FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF-like movie that does a lot of fourth wall breaking but most of it is not in a good way. I say that because “Honor” the main character is a lot like Ferris in the sense that she is really just about herself and uses people. I will say more on this later in the review. 

Where this movie fails is in just being overall misleading in its promotions and trailer, but it’s also not a comedy. Perhaps if you consider movies like SPONTANEOUS funny, then I guess for you might be slightly comedy. I didn’t see humor anywhere in this damn thing. Another issue is the actual fourth wall problem. Honor as a character is just a disaster of a person, but nearly every time she breaks the fourth wall it’s to patronize the audience watching the movie. There are lots of parts of this film where Honor assumes you are basically an idiot and can’t follow the movie's pretty simplistic rehashed plot. 

Another issue I had with this thing is the fact that even in 2022, we are still getting films overplaying the importance of going to college. This isn’t the 1980s. No one these days “needs” to go to college or their life is over. If anything college for most people ends up being a huge waste of time and money IF they are not taking classes that will lead to a real career. We also get a pretty jacked-out scene where the movie is kind of trying to paint Queen Mary (the first ever Queen of England, a Catholic who was also referred to as “Bloody Mary”) as a saint. I guess it depends on your perspective, but she is well known for burning at least 300 Protestants at the stake. I have no freaking idea what the writer was really going for here, but there is a scene in here that is essentially a celebration of her. 

As if not being funny isn’t bad enough, this movie also takes some pretty dark turns for a movie most people are probably going to go into hoping is light and fluffy. By the end of the movie you pretty much want to not have anything to do with any of these characters. Yes, Honor does have some character growth, but this comes late in the movie, then at the very end, we are shown more scenes that kind of lead you to believe she’s learned nothing. While this might be more realistic than having things work out, it’s also a LOT less fun making this movie a downer with little to offer other than seeing people you wanted to root for absolutely suck. 

Overall, I wish this movie was as funny and clever as the previews would lead us to believe, but instead it’s a poorly written mess with some ideas feeling like they were afterthoughts and not part of the original script. 

For me, this is a 2 out of 7. Not the worst movie of 2022, but it’s way down there. 

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