by SARAH ROWLAND

"There's a lot of John Hughes meets Charlie's Angels meets Scooby- Doo." That's how director Angela Robinson sums up her debut feature D.E.B.S, and her description is pretty spot on. But the L.A. filmmaker left out one crucial component: the lesbian twist, a selling point that increased the marketability of the live action comedy exponentially. Robinson remembers her lack of success when she first started pitching a film about an elite espionage academy that recruits high school girls on the basis of a hidden test within the SAT exams.

"There's a lot of stories about crime-fighting babes, so no one was going for it," she says, calling from her Cali home. "Then I thought ‘What if the hero falls in love with the villain.' I was like, ‘Okay, that's good, getting closer.' Then it clicked: ‘What if the villain's a girl.'"

Strangely enough, plaid-skirted lesbos blasting off space-age semiautomatic phallic symbols was just the right combo to secure proper financing for a 10-minute short, which in turn led to the full-length.

Using cartoonishly cute humour, D.E.B.S. follows four graduating spies - Amy, the straight-A princess (Sara Foster), the lovable airhead Janet (Jill Ritchie), the aggressive careerist Max (Meagan Good) and the French slut Dominique (Devon Aoki). Together these four saucy secret agents shoot, seduce and scheme all in the name of America's national security.

Synth smorgasbord

Robinson's 90-minute romp walks the line between making fun of itself and being very sincere, especially when it comes to the love story between Amy and Lucy Diamond, the criminal mastermind behind all things evil. But what makes this movie so much fun is the authentic retro feel. As you're watching, you half expect Lucy to stand outside of Amy's window blasting Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." She never does. But we do get to hear some pretty sweet synth tunes instead.

"Around the time that I started making this movie, there were all of these new bands that had a real '80s sound, which gave me the same sense of nostalgia as all the films that I grew up with," she says. "So I found myself filming this big smorgasbord of influences, borrowing freely from pretty much everybody and everything."

With songs from the Cure, Erasure, the Weekend and Robots in Disguise, D.E.B.S. is not only an easy contender for best soundtrack of the year, but also a blast that will make anyone who was a teen in the decade of decadence (as well as young neo-new wavers) harken back to their first all-consuming crush.

"Those innocent and wistful tones are so evocative for me," she says, referring to her film's pervading Pretty in Pink/Valley Girl/ Better Off Dead sensibility. "So I set out to capture that time in your life when you meet somebody who totally throws you for a loop and it doesn't matter who it is. But it's that first great love who makes you reassess everything you've ever done."

Sidekicks and handjobs

While the female cast is nice to look at, it's Lucy's sidekick Scud (played by Jimmi Simpson, who wasn't in the D.E.B.S. short) who has the best lines. With a sharp effeminate comedic delivery, Simpson seems to have the clearest understanding of what film he's in. Robinson agrees.

"When I was writing the movie, I kind of unconsciously had him in mind," says Robinson, who had seen him in a student film years earlier. "But I didn't know his name. He was just ‘That Guy' in that short. So by the time we were casting I forgot about him. Then I happened to look over at the casting director's pile of rejected headshots." Lo and behold: the perfect Scud.

"I'm bewildered about why she's [Robinson] so crazy about me," says Simpson, who's calling from L.A. as well. "But I love it." The virtually unknown actor describes working on a set dominated by five future Maxim centrefolds as, "Pure joy."

Along with the addition of Simpson to the cast, the feature-length has some other major differences from its predecessor. "In the short, there's a fairly graphic scene in which Lucy clearly brings Amy to a complete and total orgasm, manually," says Simpson. "The camera is basically shooting from the waist up, but it's obvious the way her arm is positioned. It's great. I mean it's awesome."

A disappointing omission for sure, but we may get to see Lucy give Amy the full Kit Kat yet. That is, if Robinson has her way.

"I love those characters so much," she says about the possibility of making D.E.B.S. 2: Pink Thunder. "I could seriously write about them forever."

D.E.B.S. opens Friday, Mar. 25

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