★
“Just because you can make a film…”
The IMDb says this is a 2016 movie. The copyright in the end credits says 2014. But shooting was apparently going on for this at least as far back as 2011, according to Internet reports. I suspect a lengthy production, shot on weekends, when the participants have some spare time, which may well explain the presence of five credited directors and eight cinematographers. Which in turns helps explains the wretched awfulness of this. Clearly a passion project for Dutch, who is its star, (one-fifth) director, (one-third) writer and executive producer, this proves that passion by itself is not sufficient.
She pulls double duty, playing both the goddess Athena, and Deborah, her chosen vessel on earth. Deb is tasked with stopping the evil machinations of multimedia mogul Girard Devereau (Young), who is kidnapping teens around Los Angeles for some malevolent purpose [a news broadcast early on puts the number of victims at 500; at the end, the number Debbie actually releases, can be counted on the fingers of one hand]. To this end, the Deborator is given ill-defined special powers, which she largely fails to use, while traipsing around Hollywood, looking for her niece, wannabe singer Anna (Andrews). She has been kidnapped by Morgana (D), one of Devereau’s minions who moonlights as a therapist. Or maybe it’s just to stop Anna from singing – in which case, we’re firmly on Team Morgana.
The best thing which can be said, is that Dutch looks good in her battle bikini. About the only genuine laugh I got from this, was when she was hit on by a pimp, who thought she might “appeal to the ‘warrior princess’ crowd”. Otherwise… Well, I initially thought it was an interesting stylistic choice to have all the fights in slow-motion. Then I realized that was actually the speed at which the “combatants” were moving. Welp. Right from the start, the digital effects are similarly inadequate. It would be charitable to say that they might have passed muster 25 years ago. At this point, you’d probably be able to match them on a mid-level iPhone.
Maybe we should nickname her Deborah “One Take” Dutch, given the occasion on which an actor obviously flubbed their line, yet the take was still used? More damning than all the technical flaws, are a storyline which has no sense of escalation or urgency to it at all. I’m not even certain I could state with confidence what Devereau’s end-game is supposed to be here. Rule #1 of movie villains: Have a clear purpose. Actually, it goes for heroes, too, and the Deb-meister is no better. Sure, she’s trying to recover her niece. Yet for someone supposedly blessed by Athena with special powers… her methods are largely indistinguishable from those of any normal person, worried about a missing relative: contact known associates and the cops. By all accounts, Dutch seems really nice, so it pains me to be so harsh, but there’s unfortunately very little of merit – or even acceptable quality – to be found here by a neutral observer.
Dir: Christine Dupree, Deborah Dutch, Chad Hawks, James Panetta and Rusty Pietrzak
Star: Deborah Dutch, Edward X. Young, Angelica Drum Andrews, Debbie D