SWIPED Review: Smart Women, Toxic Men

Men are from Mars. Let's just leave 'em there.

Swiped
The film debuts Friday, September 19, on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus.

Fresh-faced and extremely enthusiastic, Whitney Wolfe (Lily James) arrives at a startup tech company and makes a positive impression on the founder, who hires her as the director of marketing on the spot.

It's a 'bro-heavy' environment, where the few women are far outnumbered by the men, who shout them down in meetings and claim their ideas for their own. A recent college graduate, Whitney is new to professional work environments, and she forges her own strategy for survival: compliment the boys, be as aggressive as they are, and be willing to compromise in order to rise.

What Whitney doesn't yet realize is that she has landed smack dab in the middle of a toxic work environment that demeans and diminishes the accomplishment of women. And, unwittingly, out of an overt desire to succeed, she too has fallen prey to the overwhelming atmosphere of assumed male superiority.

When her new romantic relationship with a male coworker begins to suck the life out of her, she attempts to end the relationship in a kind and polite manner, to which he responds in the most hateful way possible. That's also symptomatic of how her male coworkers and superiors have treated her all along: she was blinded by her own success to a degree that she didn't recognize the warning signals that had been blaring all along.

Directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg, a television veteran who also helmed the Valley Girl remake and the comedy Unpregnant, the movie zips along at a good pace with vibrant energy, powered largely by the invigorating performance by Lily James, who navigates her character's rise and fall and rise again with aplomb and a winning personality, even when her cheer begins to ring false. Swiped is a solid addition to the 'behind the scenes dangers at internet start-ups' sub-genre of movies, which tend to stuff the narrative full of interesting events that sound like they were swiped -- sorry, not sorry -- directly from Wikipedia.

What makes Swiped stand out is Lily James' remarkably dextrous performance, together with the film's stinging takedown of toxic men, who have proliferated like house flies with undeserved staying power over too many years.