The intention of Sheroes seems incredibly clear: To make a fun, female-centric action comedy. While Sheroes has potential, it feels like an interesting idea that never came to fruition but was greenlit as a film anyway. While there is fun to be had, the story goes nowhere, and the characters don't feel believable. Sheroes jumps from point A to point B without anything to say or much direction, creating a mediocre action experience.
Written and directed by Jordan Gertner, Sheroes follows Diamond (Sasha Luss), Ezra (Isabelle Fuhrman), Ryder (Wallis Day), and Daisy (Skai Jackson), four luxurious friends who travel to Thailand to stay in Diamond's filmmaker father's vacation home. When Daisy searches the city for some party favors, she finds danger and gets herself kidnapped. Her three best friends, while not having any real survival skills of their own, take cues from the action films made by Diamond's dad and forge a plan to rescue Daisy from the Thai drug cartel.
Sheroes attempts to be a fun and campy action film akin to D.E.B.S or Spring Breakers, but it lacks substance and a distinct style. The film borrows from so many other films and feels trite and derivative because of it. The characters are all caricatures who carry surface value flare. Luss and Fuhrman are charming, but they are playing thinly written people who are derivative of every other action movie. Sheroes could have been a The Hangover-esque flick with more thrills, but instead, it relies on clichés.
Sheroes does have a factor of fun if you turn your brain off and just enjoy a mindless action film. The attempted humor usually doesn't land and feels like filler, but some of the action sequences are adequate. The film is frantically edited, which is a trend nowadays, but it doesn't feel like it has its own unique style, instead borrowing from everything from Charlie's Angels to the Scarlett Johannson comedy caper Rough Night but never finding its own rhythm. The storyline is simplistic and drawn out, and as the film hits its second act, it isn't clear what the point of it all is. Thankfully, the colorful cinematography and dedicated actors make it watchable.
One thing Sheroes is not, however, is boring. The film is a harmless way to kill an hour and a half, but it doesn't offer up anything fresh or memorable. If it weren't for the committed cast, the film would suffer immensely, but while it doesn't offer anything unique, it features some brief fun. Although, none of the enjoyable sequences are over the top enough to provide anything of true substance.
Sheroes contains ingredients that could have worked if mixed together properly, but Gertner settles for passable instead of something memorable. Sheroes is harmless, but the plotline is extremely thin, and the stakes are fairly low. Overall, Sheroes is not a total loss, but it fails to be much more than mediocre action fare.
Sheroes will be released in select theaters and on Digital on June 23.