Samuel L. Jackson's A24 Movie Was A Mega Flop That's Best Left Forgotten

When you think of A24, you think of boutique, creator-driven movies grappling with weighty themes. You don't necessarily think of the studio's distribution arm, which over the years has helped bring multiple films to theaters that don't necessarily fit the arthouse sensibilities of the best A24 films. Take the unfortunately-titled "Barely Lethal," for instance, an action comedy starring Hailee Steinfeld and Samuel L. Jackson that would have been more at home with Disney. Rather than being a refreshing change of pace for A24, however, the film debuted to horrendous reviews and didn't make back even a quarter of its already meager budget.

Some of the worst-rated A24 movies on Rotten Tomatoes are still worth watching, but "Barely Lethal" isn't one of them. The film is directed by Kyle Newman, whose only other recent release was 2022's "1Up," a film about an all-girls team who compete in a gaming competition. The reviews for that esports comedy weren't great, but they were perhaps slightly better than the reviews for "Barely Lethal."

Newman's 2015 action comedy stars Steinfeld as a secret agent who fakes her own death in order to enroll in high school to experience a normal adolescence. Jackson plays her former trainer. The movie hit DirecTV Cinema on April 30, 2015, but it also got a limited theatrical release in May of that year courtesy of A24. Sadly, the studio's involvement didn't seem to help, as "Barely Lethal" couldn't even break the $1 million mark at the box office.

"Barely Lethal" follows Hailee Steinfeld's teenager Agent 83/Megan Walsh, who was trained by the government's Prescott Academy to become a field operative. Her trainer, Hardman (Samuel L. Jackson), constantly reminds his trainees to have no attachments outside their jobs as government agents. But Megan yearns for a more traditional teenage experience, and after a mission to capture an arms dealer, she allows herself to fall into a river and escape. Soon after, she enrolls in a Connecticut high school as a Canadian exchange student. But her old life quickly catches up to her, forcing her to reveal her secret to her new family and friends.

The movie attempts to send up teen dramas, but it doesn't really follow through and ends up occupying a weird middle ground between teen movie parody and actual teen movie. Sadly, or thankfully given how poor the final film actually was, nobody was interested in this tale of an adolescent spy. Now A24 has had some missteps before. The studio's 2024 horror "The Front Room" was a bloody box office train wreck. Likewise, Jackson is no stranger to box office flops. But "Barely Lethal" made just $933,847 on a $15 million budget, which has got to be some sort of record for both.

The reviews weren't much better. "Barely Lethal" has a 26% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Wendy Ide of The Times calling it "a flat-footed retread of the very films Megan avidly watches in preparation for her latest 'mission.'" Still, Kim Newman of Empire Magazine liked the film's "charm and sense of fun" enough to give it a begrudgingly positive review. If you'd like to make your own mind up, you can rent or buy "Barely Lethal" from the usual digital platforms.