'He's All That' Movie Review

That's right, this movie is actually getting a generally positive review from someone, and that someone is me.

I'll be honest. This is my first time writing a movie review, but I hope to write many more in the future, and seeing as how literally everything has been depressing enough lately, I'd like to jump into this world of reviewing with something a little more glass half full.

That being said, I hate remakes, and reboots. Really and truly, and I know that's such a broad statement to make considering some arguably turn out better than the original, but I stand by it. I hate remakes. It's just lazy.

There's literally thousands of unknown writers sitting on completely original scripts right now, and unlike Hollywood would have you believe, they don't all suck. I'm sure most are in need of heavy tweaking, but no they don't just suck because they aren't written by the same people who've have been selling their scripts for decades.

So again I say, it's just lazy. Rather than encourage original ideas we hire well known writers to regurgitate plot lines that in the case of She's All That, has been absolutely dragged for how "problematic" it was. Fast forward a few years and we're apparently all on board to just completely remake it, because maybe Gen Z will be more forgiving if we mistreat a male character, rather than a female character? Okay, shoot, let's try it.

So here we are and honestly, I didn't hate it.

Maybe I should have but I don't go into movies wanting to hate them. In fact, I can count on one hand the movies that I would never voluntarily watch again. Everything else is on the table, this movie included. (Okay. I did watch it multiple times already, pretty sure I'm single handedly responsible for the fact that it's still in the Netflix top 10 in the US.)

He's All That is directed by Mark Waters (Freaky Friday, Mean Girls) and written by guess who? R. Lee Fleming Jr. You probably don't know who that is, because no one ever knows writers, *sigh*, anyways he wrote She's All That, this movies predecessor.

Remember what I was complaining about earlier? New writers not getting hired? Well, I stand by that, but in this case I suppose if we're bringing on someone to write this script, it should be the writer of the original, right? Sure.

He's All That is the remake of the 1999 classic She's All That. It follows basically the exact same plot points, while trying very hard to please teens of today, and at the same time attempting to throw in enough nostalgia for those of us who grew up on the original, so as to leave everyone satisfied. I have to say I think this was a doomed goal from the start, but I can appreciate the effort.

He's All That is the story of Padgett Sawyer (Addison Rae), a high school senior and influencer who specializes in makeovers. Padgett catches her boyfriend Jordan (Peyton Meyer) cheating on her and makes a scene while she is live on Tik Tok in front of "like a zillion people". Because the internet is often a terrible place, this causes Padgett to lose thousands of followers and a sponsorship she was counting on to pay her way through college.

Yes, you read that right. She catches her boyfriend cheating on her, gets upset as many humans would, and loses followers. You got to love social media.

Now, eager to redeem herself, Padgett brags to her friends Alden (Madison Pettis) and Quinn (Myra Molloy) that she can find a new guy and make him more popular than Jordan, or at least she's going to make him prom king. This sort of confused me to be honest. It felt like this was only done to stay as close as possible to the original, but I could be wrong. Does everyone still really care that much about prom king and queen? Someone please tell me.

Either way, Alden ups the ante, and makes this a full on bet, with her and Quinn in charge of choosing the guy. They choose none other than the stereotypical mansplaining hipster I've met a thousand times in Brooklyn, Cameron Kweller (Tanner Buchanan), to become Padgett's "project," as they call him. Yikes.

This is a romance, so it should come as absolutely no surprise that while forcing him to hangout with her and drastically changing his appearance, Padgett begins to see a side to Cameron she didn't expect and starts to fall for him in the process. Obviously their budding romance is complicated when Cameron learns that he was "a f*cking bet" (bless them for keeping this line), so Padgett has to step back from her influencer lifestyle and show the world who she really is, if she has any chance of getting Cameron back.

There are some major problems with this movie, absolutely. For starters, you've heard it before I'm sure, but Addison Rae is no actress. Not yet, at least. We could've had a stronger lead in this movie. I say, not yet however because she does have her moments. I mean the girl is adorable, so if acting is her dream I say keep at it and maybe she'll improve. Many will probably disagree with me but I didn't find her unwatchable. It's a rom com y'all, if you want them to be vying for an Oscar, you're really asking too much.

As for the rest of the cast I genuinely enjoyed them. Rachael Leigh Cook and Matthew Lillard can do no wrong for me, so obviously despite the fact that it was confusing as hell that they'd be in this movie without reprising the same roles they had in the first movie, I was happy to have them there.

Special shoutout to Isabella Crovetti, who plays Cameron's little sister, Brin. She didn't serve the same purpose as Kieran Culkin's character, who was the younger sibling of the love interest in the original, but she did impress me. The younger sibling role in this remake took on a more intense tone and this girl actually had me choking up a little at one point. I hope to see her in more in the future.

While I wouldn't call the writing bad, I would say that some scenes were just so obviously forced that I wish they would've rethought how they could've been done better. It really could've made such a difference.

A few dishonorable mentions here are Padgett and Cameron falling into suspiciously placed horse poop and then laughing hysterically about it, when they are still just getting to know each other. This was too much, way too much. I mourn for the loss of what this scene could've been if it would've been given just a touch more thought.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also call out the dance off at the end. While I appreciate the attempt at recreating the dance from the original, from the dancing, to the music, to the lack of Usher as the school's resident DJ and choreographer, I don't know how they thought they were going to get anywhere close to the original and I wish they would have just gone in a totally different direction with this scene.

I also have to call out some incredibly strange shot choices in this movie. Most notably, the scene where Padgett begins Cameron's makeover by shaving his face and cutting his hair. This scene is composed of extreme close ups, edited together seemingly with no real flow and set to, I'm no musician, but what I presume to be opera music. Why?

I don't really understand what purpose this was meant to serve for the story. I know we're all very tired of the typical makeover montage, but then again, are we? There was a better direction to go in with this and you can't convince me otherwise.

Now you're probably wondering why I would start this review off in defense of this movie when I've obviously got plenty negative to say about it and here's why.

These movies represent something very important that I hope survives from generation to generation. The reminder that humans are all inherently flawed, but people can and do change.

At the beginning of this review I mentioned what most of us probably know, that a lot of people are angry with the original movie for the problematic trope it presented.

In both movies the main character, Padgett, or Zack in the original, start out as seemingly, somewhat vapid people, rolling through life making decisions based on what they think everyone else wants from them. That is until they meet the love interest, Cameron, or Laney in the original, and begin to see life as something only lived to the fullest when you're being true to yourself. In the end, they ultimately make the decision to change and embrace their true selves, in a ridiculously short time span.

The love interest changes too. They generally go from being anti-social and somewhat pretentious to be honest, to realizing that they too have their own problems, and character flaws. With the help of the main character, they learn to embrace life and give other people a chance to disappoint them, before just assuming they will.

As always in these kinds of movies, despite how seriously awful it was of our main character to bet on a human being and start a relationship with them under false pretenses, the love interest always forgives them and they live happily ever after.

I understand why people find this upsetting, because in real life you would hope if someone played you like a fiddle, you would find the self respect to at least make them wait more than 48 hours before you forgave them, but here's the facts boys and girls, it's a movie and we don't have that kind of time.

I think it's worth looking a little deeper into what this trope is trying to represent, more than what it's giving you on the surface level. In the real world, of course you would hope to tell Padgett/Zack to go to hell and move on. In movie world though Cameron/Laney, as well as we in the audience, know that our main character is truly a good and decent person, they just made a horrible mistake and we want to see them acknowledge that and learn from their mistake and grow. Of course that isn't how it happens in real life.

In real life we don't know someone's entire life, so when they make a mistake we tend to assume about them based on that mistake. In real life people don't change over the course of an hour and a half, sometimes they don't change for decades.

But people do change. People are inherently flawed in many ways. None of us are perfect and all of us have done things to hurt other people, whether intentional or unintentional, and all of us have been hurt.

The hope, however, is that we are all growing and learning and becoming better. We hope that those who have hurt us, also become better, whether that's with us or apart from us.

I think ultimately this trope is toxic if you choose to see it in the very literal sense, that we are intended to forgive people who have seriously wronged us if there's a romantic connection there. That's not how I see it.

I see these movies as a reminder that all of us screw up and hurt people, and all of us are hurting. People do in fact change and grow, and acknowledging that and forgiving helps us to move on. Whether you choose to keep them in your life or not, is irrelevant.

Acknowledging that these main characters and by extension, you yourself, can be both a decent, well intending person, and simultaneously someone who makes mistakes, can help you forgive yourself too.

Overall, I really did enjoy this movie. Even the parts I hated at least had me laughing, usually because I was so uncomfortable, but it's been a hard couple years. A laugh is a laugh.

There's also the fact that although it makes me incredibly jealous, I like watching all these Netflix movies about incredibly rich teens and their parties. Like damn, my friends and I just drove around aimlessly a lot in high school, but okay, enjoy your karaoke party with the very subtle product placement.

Yeah, I know, the product placement is actually obnoxious throughout the whole movie, but c'mon, Netflix has to fund these elaborate scenes to really show us how rich these teens are!

I'm not going to tell you this movie is winning any awards. I'm not even going to try to convince you that it's the best Netflix original teen romance (it definitely isn't, Peter Kavinsky 4eva).

What it is though, for me, a long time lover of a rom com, is entertaining enough, even if sometimes the entertainment is coming at the expense of the film itself. I mean, who cares really right? People spent years shitting on Twilight and now #twilight provides most of the content on my Tik Tok feed.

I went to film school (God, I hate telling people that), but I do know the basis of "what makes a good movie," but if there's one thing I walked away from school with it's a strong sense of annoyance at people who can't accept that even if something isn't objectively "good" from a cinematic perspective, it doesn't mean it's bad all the way around.

In short, this movie made me giggle, this movie made me smile, this movie made me cringe, and this movie made me nostalgic for She's All That, and all the good memories I have of that time in my life, and for that I thank you, He's All That.

Also, it brought me "Mean Streets of Pali", which may or may not be on a Spotify playlist of mine right now, unironically. "Lil freaks in the jeeps don't play", you know?