My Review of "He's All That"

He's All That is a 2021 movie remake of the 1999 movie "She's All That." I fondly remember watching the older 1999 version years ago and I was curious how this one turned out. Looking back at the old 1999 version of the film, I do recognize that it wasn't a great movie, however I'm looking for the charm that the original had. At least with some charm this movie can hold it's own right?

The movie starts off with a modern twist. It would be hard to see how they couldn't make this movie without social media. Our main protagonist Padgett is a social media queen. She's got millions of followers on her socials and makes a ton of money off being an influencer.

All this takes a turn for the worse when she finds out that her boyfriend Jordan has been cheating on her. The whole ordeal gets caught on social media. Unfortunately for Padgett she had an utter meltdown. With trolls on the internet cyber bullying Padgett, she suddenly loses over a hundred thousand followers. This quickly spirals downwards where she loses her sponsorship.

Now that Padgett's world has come crumbling down she makes a bet with her friend Alden that she can make another boy popular as Jordan. In doing so Padgett believes her sponsorships and her followers will come back. The deal gets done but only if Alden gets to choose the boy.

Fortunately for a loner named Cameron, he's picked as the guinea pig. Now Padgett has to clean up this boy's act and make him homecoming king for their next homecoming dance.

The storyline is almost scene for scene similar to the first She's All That movie with the exception of the gender swaps. In the original movie there's a boy that has to makeover a girl instead this time it's a girl making over a boy. It's still a very much fun premise that I think a lot of young adults can catch onto.

Each of the actors do their best with the material that is given to them but there are on occasion some wooden acting. That's not to say that wasn't the case with the original as well. All of the actors in this production are very young actors so you can't really fault them for lack of acting experience. In some ways I'm glad they got the young actors rather than getting older actors playing as teenagers.

There are however a lot of weird situations in this movie that really don't compute. This Cameron character is supposed to be this loner guy that gets bullied all the time at school. Yet he does something close to the end of the movie that doesn't make sense at all seeing as his character is supposed to be bullied. There's no mention of anything that comes up to that moment to make sense of it either. There are a lot of inconsistencies like this throughout the movie. Strange change in directions for characters that don't quite fit but it just comes in conveniently for the story.

Then there's also a very awkwardly weird dance scene close to the end of the movie. There's no explanation of how they learned this dance or even them practicing this dance. Yet opposing teams can dance in sync with their opponents. The whole scenario is bizarre and I think they even knew it because the principal of the movie mentions how weird it is.

That leads me to think that a lot of this movie is pretty aware of itself. Sort of like in the original movie we knew that Rachel Leigh Cook is beautiful and some frumpy clothes aren't going to magically make her seem ugly. That goes the same with this Cameron character. There's even some topless scene where the guy looks like he's some body builder of some sort.

It's a predictable movie and yet that's what this movie has for it. Romantic comedies are generally predictable. Everyone should know that and should be expecting that when they watch this movie. On occasion that have some of those weird scenes that I mentioned earlier and bizarrely I just went with it.

Overall, I didn't think this movie is as bad as everyone says it is but it is by no means a good movie. It's a meh movie. If you liked the original She's All That movie then it won't be far fetched for you to like this movie as well. It's got a lot of the same problems and some of the same charm as the original. I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. It's not terrible but I wouldn't admit to my friends that I watched this movie.