At 25, ‘The Opposite of Sex’ demands to be remembered
Girl meets boy. Girl gives boy handjobs in the backseat after band practice. Girl gets pregnant, steals her gay half-brother’s lover, and goes on the run to Canada after getting in a gunfight with the real baby-daddy. 1998’s The Opposite of Sex delivers a tale as old as time, really. Well, as long as we define time as “25 years.” And why wouldn’t we? 25 years is, like, ancient!
What? You thought we’d talk about the 25th anniversary of the movie The Opposite of Sex and not offer up snide meta-commentary as we did it? Get real. This movie is giving you the stink-eye the whole time. And you, like the weirdos that you are, love every second of it. Just admit it! Eww! Get a room or whatever.
And if you didn’t read every word of that through the contemptuous tone of an 18-year-old Christina Ricci looking like the Mini-Me version of Marilyn Monroe, then apologies! We’re admittedly no Dedee Truitt, triple threat: snarky teenage runaway/chain-smoker/accidental murderess. And we sure as heck don’t have writer-director Don Roos penning our acidic dialogue. Nor a veritable who’s-who cast of ‘90s Whos like Lisa Kudrow, Martin Donovan, Johnny Galecki, Ivan Sergei, and Lyle Lovett on hand to help us sparkle like the gutter-Lolita of our dreams.
Way before Yellowjackets Christina Ricci was serving up magic.
In 1998, Christina Ricci was sparkling from on high as the sarcastic queen of indie cinema. Already an icon to her generation for her role as Wednesday Addams in two Addams Family movies, the time had come in her career for the former child star to transition to more adult fare. And she jumped right to it, shooting off like a deliciously contemptuous firework – the perfect living embodiment of that moment’s sardonic Daria-esque death glare.
In the span of two years, she starred in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ‘66, Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and John Waters’ Pecker. She brought her alt-girl glory to every single one of those roles, with a snarl or an eye-roll that won our devotion and made us shiver.
But it was Dedee, sandwiched right in the middle of all that alterna-magic, that gave Ricci the definitive showcase for all we love about her. Dedee’s like a deadpan Almodovarian heroine dropped into an old-fashioned coming-of-age story, setting fire to everything she touches — up to and including the script itself. And she drags every other character – specifically Donovan as the gay half-brother Bill, Sergei as his hot dumb boyfriend Matt, and Kudrow as Bill’s hilariously bitter friend Lucia – behind her to put out the flames.
So what’s the story of The Opposite of Sex?
We first meet Dedee on the run, as she will spend the majority of the film. She shows up on Bill’s porch with a sob story about her shitty mom and pervy stepfather, and quickly insinuates herself into his life, not to mention his spare room.
Bill is a high school English teacher in rural Indiana whose previous lover, Tom, died of AIDS, leaving him a pile of money. He now lives with Matt, whose main duty seems to be sitting by the pool looking exquisite. (And he does that very well indeed.) Meanwhile, Tom’s sister Lucia (Kudrow) is Bill’s number one hanger-on, attached to his hip while ignoring her own happiness. Lucia, already primed to pounce on anyone who comes into their orbit, immediately sees through Dedee. And when Dedee sleeps with and runs off with Matt, all of Lucia’s resentments only get emboldened in hilarious fashion.
From there, The Opposite of Sex becomes a chase movie with Bill and Lucia (plus Lyle Lovett as a local police officer) following Dedee and Matt across the country. Whether it’s for love (as Bill claims) or for sex (as Lucia firmly believes), everybody has a teachable moment coming to them on both those things — and how and where they do and do not overlap. Even if Dedee would grimace at such mundane life lessons as those being the meaning of her story.
As the film’s mocking narrator, Dedee is openly hostile in that Wednesday Addams-way, not just to every other character but also to the audience itself. She practically spits lines like, “If you think I’m just plucky and scrappy and all I need is love, you’re in over your heads – I don’t have a heart of gold, and I don’t grow one later.”
This hellion heroine is the movie’s own ongoing Mystery Science Theater 3000 track. That’s how Roger Ebert described Ricci’s performance in his loving review, saying any movie would be made better by an ongoing commentary of Dedee snark slathered over it. Of course, Ebert also made a crack in that same review about how Dedee must have been named after her bra size, a line which from our vantage point here in 2023 elicits the hardest of side-eyes.
How does The Opposite of Sex hold up 25 years later?
That said, a lot about The Opposite of Sex itself elicits a side-eye in 2023. Dedee starts the film at just 16 years old, and whilst all Lolita’d up, spends most of her time smoking, screwing, and sneering ha-ha homophobic comments at Bill and Matt. The movie does point out that she is “legal” by the time she’s having sex with twenty-something Matt, but, you know, still. And the underage bad behavior isn’t limited to her. Johnny Galecki’s character, a nasty twunk in nipple rings, blackmails Bill with a fake molestation charge.
Even in 1998, the film was purposefully provocative. The Opposite of Sex‘s tagline was “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be offended.” Arguably, Roos, as an openly gay filmmaker, had the leeway to have one gay character call another “a little grunge f*ggot.” The snark was coming from inside the house. And, speaking from personal experience as well as my experience of every other homosexual I have ever come into contact with, we ate that shit up. Twenty-five years later, however, the film’s provocatively anti-Politically Correct attitude can be sometimes jarring.
All of that does make The Opposite of Sex feel very much a product of its time, encased in amber like a sticky, biting, but remarkable mosquito. This movie could never get made today. And some of those reasons do feel justified. In the late ’90s, AIDS jokes were a release valve for a gay community who’d been through it. But removed from that context by time, they splat on impact today. The faked rape charges as a laugh riot have aged even less gracefully. Progression and regression are all lovey-dovey hand-in-hand, just depending on where you’re standing!
Still, the movie defiantly remains very funny, even through the occasional wince. Mainly thanks to Ricci and Kudrow’s performances, which rank among the two’s very best. That is saying something when you’re talking about two of the world’s funniest living actresses.
Roos’ script is packed full of quotable zingers, and those two reliably knock them into outer space with their delivery. My personal favorite comes when DeDee asks Lucia how she got so bitter, and Lucia replies simply, “Observation.”
Indeed I could spend all day throwing Lucia lines at you: “You’re probably a blessing in disguise. Fucking good disguise.”
What better time to revisit this brat opus of 1998? The ’90s are having their moment again. Ricci is riding a renaissance, thanks to her deranged turn as Misty Quigley on Yellowjackets and her twisted return to the Addams family in Wednesday.
Twenty-five years in, warts and all, The Opposite of Sex is very much a movie that should be more widely celebrated and seen. DeDee demands your devotion, dammit.
How to watch: The Opposite of Sex is available for rent and purchase on Prime Video.
