Starring Jordana Brewster, Sara Foster, and Holland Taylor. Unrated.

With their knee socks, puffy white shirts, and abbreviated tartan skirts, what could be more dangerous than private-school girls on the make? Well, try private-school girls with automatic weapons and government authorization to use them.

That's the premise of D.E.B.S., a surprisingly funny and warmly subversive entry in the Spy Kids category-although you might not want to bring some of your younger Agent Cody Banks fans.

The cartoonish plot, devised by director Angela Robinson, concerns a very exclusive girls school. At the D.E.B.S. Academy, young women compete to see who will lead the next generation of spies dedicated to protecting the free world (meaning the United States, of course).

The top scorer among our current crop is Amy (Sara Foster), a lanky blond equally at home with a laser weapon or a detailed mathematical analysis. Standing beside her in the school's killer squadron are envious, tough-as-nails Max (Meagan Goode), ditzy wannabe Janet (Jill Ritchie), and Parisian Dominique (Devon Aoki), who always has time for a smoke and a Gallic shrug while reloading.

This group is trusted enough by the school's headmistress (Holland Taylor, in impeccably hard-nosed form) and president (Michael Clarke Duncan) to be sent after public enemy number one. This would be an arms merchant and all-around shit-disturber called Lucy Diamond, played by charmer Jordana Brewster, who needs to eat a few Mars bars. According to spy-world legend, no one has ever engaged Lucy in combat and lived, so Amy becomes unnerved when circumstances cause her to bump into this nemesis in the dead of night. She has reason to worry, because the cat-suited villain gets an instant crush on our good girl, and whatever Lucy wants, she pretty much gets.

Abetting the world-class criminal in her nogoodnikness-the cool-guy Boris to her Natasha-is Scud, a tech-minded boho played by Jimmi Simpson, who looks like a cross between Beck and James Spader. We don't know why he wants to help Lucy break international laws, except for all the Future Shop gear it involves, but he definitely encourages her hookups with the confused Amy. Besides, he has surreptitiously exchanged e-mails with Janet, and who knows where that could go?

Essentially, the movie is high school with death rays, and the peer pressure, unspoken yearnings, and fear of authority are about the same as in any big-screen gymnasium, albeit at potentially higher stakes. (There are some explosions, but the violence here is of a wisecracking, bloodless variety.) It's not until the story gets well under way-and things do have a somewhat slow and talky start-that you realize what it's really about: following the clues to your real identity. Amy, it turns out, is a spy in the House of Normal, and sometimes, for some people, mastering the rules can mean you need to throw them away. Still, there's no reason to nix the knee socks.