ReView: Cure Your ‘Heated Rivalry’ Hangover With ‘D.E.B.S.’

It’s heated. They’re rivals. And secretly gay. Ringing any bells?

“D.E.B.S.,” a 2004 spy spoof from director Angela Robinson, is similar to the holiday season’s hit hockey-romance show “Heated Rivalry” in that it has little to do with its main characters’ competitive occupations and more to do with their illicit romance.

The film follows spies-in-training Amy, Max, Janet and Dominique, the top squad at paramilitary academy D.E.B.S. — the acronym standing for the school’s four tenants of discipline, energy, beauty and strength. 

Recruited by a hidden test embedded within the SAT, the D.E.B.S. put the heeled boot in boot camp, slinging shotguns on the waistbands of plaid skirts in top secret missions that apparently require little athleticism and lots of nonchalance.

While still coolly detached, Amy (Sara Foster) is the most ambitious D.E.B., her perfect score on the entrance test granting her star student status. She takes on the tall task of writing her thesis paper on evasive supercriminal Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster), notorious for her reputation of killing every agent she encounters.

Dropped off the radar and drop dead gorgeous, Lucy finds herself tracked down by the D.E.B.S. on her first date with an assassin whose fake Russian accent is much less convincing than Heated Rivalry star Connor Storrie’s.

When a chance encounter brings Amy and Lucy, the top marks in their fields, together, sparks fly — and not just from their gun barrels.

The low-budget comedy primarily leans into the low-budget part of that description with CGI that makes the “Lizzie McGuire” animations look like “Avatar” and writing so dry most attempts at humor suck the air out of the scene. 

While not an impressive show of filmmaking prowess, the film’s carelessly campy tone is what made critics dislike it and modern fans award it queer cult film status.  

The only thing the movie takes truly seriously is the tenderhearted love between the protagonists. Never playing their romance for laughs, the film spends a good portion of its 92-minute runtime montaging their milkshake-sharing antics atop an admittedly incredible soundtrack.

But as logic, worldbuilding, characterization, humor, stunt choreography and cinematography are all swept to the side to platform Foster (“90210,” “The Big Bounce”) and Brewster’s (“Fast & Furious,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) endearing chemistry, their clandestine love is uncannily genuine as it’s framed by sloppily imitated elements of genre films like “Charlie’s Angels.”

There’s certainly space for lighthearted lesbian movies made for the casual viewer’s entertainment and not the Oscar voter’s ballot. Especially as a majority of the most big studio-friendly sapphic films are awards-bait tragics set decades, if not centuries in the past, modern romances detached from traumatic narratives like “D.E.B.S.” are a largely untapped market.

Recent films like 2023’s fight club comedy “Bottoms” prove the campy and the complex can and should coexist in lesbian films. The mainstream success of a show like “Heated Rivalry,” where the romance is hopeful and horny, signals that large production studios should take risks on low-budget queer projects that depart from the depressing “Blue Is the Warmest Color” mold. 

“D.E.B.S.” is by no means the perfect queer movie, but it deserves credit for going against the grain — even if it wasn’t entirely successful in doing so. 

The film’s staying power in queer spaces proves there’s demand for more silly sapphic flicks, opening up the floor to much-needed positive representation of lesbians that exist outside of the white, femme-presenting norm. 

While “D.E.B.S.” may not infiltrate your Letterboxd Four Favorites anytime soon, it’s an easygoing watch that’ll satisfy desires for lighthearted queer chemistry. 

“D.E.B.S.” is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, Google Play and Prime Video.