This is on Netflix and I watched it at the weekend. It's a bit meh. It's quite good at representing the various asshole things the patriarchy does, but the characters never really come to life, and despite hopes it would be Poehler's answer to Tina Fey's Mean Girls, it's nowhere near as fun, and doesn't really try to be. Basically, a teenage girl with Poehler as her mother listens to mom's favourite Bikini Kill song, starts an anonymous zine, which becomes popular and everyone realises patriarchy sucks.
But it doesn't do much to explain the joys of riot grrl or zine culture. The lead character writes a few zines but we don't get much detail on what's in them, and she never forms a riot grrl band, which is disappointing when it should celebrate female creativity. It's politically impassioned but lacks the iconic rebellion of something like We Are The Best or Ten Things I Hate About You. Maybe I'm prejudiced because I regard girls' sport and boys' sport as equally trivial (as indeed We Are The Best did).
Fundamentally it all feels like it's been done, which is itself a sad analysis on American high school and sexism more generally. Characters aren't very interesting (is Poehler as the lead character's mother really supposed to be a gender traitor for dating dad-joke-spouting Clark Gregg?). Plot threads are forgotten, and you don't get much of the "who's behind this?" excitement/chase. You could also argue about race, sexuality (nearly everyone is very straight), disability (there's a very tokenistic character in a wheelchair), the number of supportive male characters vs mean female authority figures, and much more. But maybe you won't bother and would rather just watch Bring It On again.
