D.E.B.S. is quite a curious little oddity. For about the first 15 minutes, it impersonates Charlie's Angels more blatantly than just about anything out there, except maybe Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. During mission debriefings, Michael Clarke Duncan even addresses his flock of teen operatives the same way John Forsythe addresses his Angels. Then suddenly, radically, the film becomes a lesbian love story, set within this candy-colored, gadget-frenzied spy milieu. And it's not just a "safe" story about a lesbian fling, in which protagonist Amy (Sara Foster) eventually realizes that villainous Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster) is up to no good, unworthy of her affections, which revert to unambiguously heterosexual by the end. No, these two really care about each other, fighting the strictures of their assigned roles (good guy vs. bad guy, heterosexual vs. homosexual) in order to be together. This all makes Angela Robinson's film feel liberating and unusual, but it begs the question: who is its audience? If it's girls, then D.E.B.S. offers some pretty poor role models, as the characters are trigger-happy with their oversized pistols (unlike the weaponless Angels), and the French one (Devon Aoki) smokes incessantly. That's to say nothing of the movie's preponderance of lesbians, which aren't usually part of mainstream teen entertainment. If it's boys, then there's plenty to feed their most crass female fantasies (lipstick lesbians in plaid schoolgirl skirts with guns blazing), but not many characters for them to identify with. Whether this schizophrenic kitsch sits well with the viewer will determine whether he or she likes the movie. The most likely outcome is that viewers will never feel completely comfortable with D.E.B.S. -- its derivative parts a little too derivative, its unconventional parts a little too out there.
