A nice idea for a teen movie pastiche (with a borderline-misjudged gag in the title) that fails to follow up on its promise. Samuel L Jackson plays Hardman, a tough military guy who runs a special ops tactical unit that takes tiny preschool girl orphans and trains them to become terrifying commando ninjas by their teens.
Hailee Steinfeld is Megan, his most gifted student, who is lonely and wants to forget about her killing techniques and just be a regular teenage girl – so she fakes her own death and enrols in a high school under a fake name, having studied movies such as Clueless, Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You to get tips on how to behave.
But of course her martial-arts training comes in useful. There are some funny moments, and Steinfeld herself is a winning presence – but a movie like this has to be more densely packed with gags and observations. There is a good line about Vera Farmiga.
