"Honor Society" - Film Review
Honor Rose (Angourie Rice) has big plans in Honor Society. It’s her senior year of high school and she can’t wait to put her hometown in the rearview mirror. Harvard is where she wants to end up, and she knows that her school principal (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) uses his connections there to help one student per year get a leg up in the application process. This year it’s down to Honor, Michael (Gaten Matarazzo), Kennedy (Amy Keum), and Travis (Armani Jackson). Honor concocts a scheme to force the other three out of the running, but she doesn’t plan on falling in love along the way.
Once again, Rice has proven her star power. She stole scenes from actors whose careers began before she was born in The Nice Guys, Senior Year, and Mare of Easttown. It won’t be long before Rice is a household name, and this fourth-wall-breaking performance as a teenage Machiavellian coup leader is a tour du force. Rice channels the quick-witted rage of Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls into a completely modern character who benefits from having a direct line of communication with the audience.
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After Fleabag, the number of tv shows and movies that integrated fourth-wall breaks grew exponentially, with varying levels of success. Rice’s performance, the fast-paced nature of the script, and the dichotomy of Honor being closed off but willing to divulge her secret plans to the audience all make Honor Society's fourth-wall breaks interesting rather than distracting. The film keeps the pace of interactions between Honor and the camera steady, as though the audience members watching are characters themselves.
Most recently, the Netflix adaptation of Persuasion by Jane Austen tried to have the main character play off the camera. It used the fourth-wall break intermittently, more as voiceover narration than as an integral character in its own right. That’s where Persuasion failed. Honor Society feels a bit like it’s stumbling down that path in the beginning. At about midway, however, Honor is minding her own business and silently scrolling through pictures of Michael on her phone. She takes a moment to herself, then looks up, and is startled to see the camera watching her. Up to that point, her breaks to the camera are simply about showing off. Honor has been bragging that she’s a master puppeteer and no one has ever seen the real her. This brief moment, when she immediately becomes defensive, is a prime example of how to make a fourth-wall break impactful for the viewer and the character.
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To Honor Society’s credit, it’s not just a cut-and-dried teen comedy. There’s a twist in the third act that will take many viewers by surprise. It’s fun to watch Honor’s schemes come to fruition, and the supporting characters are a blast. Honor’s best friends, Emma (Avery Konrad) and Thalia (Kelcey Mawema), are a dynamic duo willing to jump fully into Honor’s devious plans at a moment’s notice.
Paramount+ is rarely included in the conversation of need-to-have streaming services. Its adaptation of the widely beloved video game franchise Halo brought some people to the platform, but new releases don’t garner the same trending topics that other streamers do. That may cause Honor Society to fly under the radar, and that would be a shame. Those who do seek it out will be hard pressed not to fall under its charms.
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