She's All That

SHE'S ALL THAT (1999) *

Reviewed 5/8/99

In She's All That, Zach Siler (Freddie Prinze Jr.), the most popular guy in high school, has just been dumped by Taylor Vaughan (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe), the most popular girl in high school. While taking the sour grapes approach saying anyone could attain Taylor's status, Zach is challenged by his friend Drew to a bet. In the eight weeks of school left, Zach must "elevate" a girl of Drew's choosing to prom queen, a position all but held by Taylor. Drew does not do a good job choosing because he picks Laney Boggs, a nerdy painter. Rachael Leigh Cook plays Laney, and even made up as drably as possible, it's easy to see Cook is strikingly beautiful. Thus, we have this straw man's version of Pygmalian. Of course this was no less the case in My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn, but She's All That is far more venal.

The social class transition in My Fair Lady is here a transition in high school stratification. The essential means to this end is to give Laney a laughable makeover. The laughable part is not in the makeover itself, but that she would need it in the first place. In a bewildering appearance amounting to little more than a cameo, Anna Paquin as Zach's sister arrives to apply even more makeup to the layers already apparent on Rachael Cook's face. The message to women -- take off the glasses, style the hair, apply the makeup, and if you already look like Rachael Cook, then the best looking, most popular guy in school is yours. Before I get protests that the movie is just a fantasy, well, of course it is, but our fantasies are revealing in what they tell us about ourselves. If it's achieved with the wave of a magic wand by a fairy godmother or by adding makeup, there is a difference between the two. And the fantasy goal here, to obtain the student president and prom king, is not exactly a laudable one.

She's All That would be much less disingenuous had it cast someone like Heather Matarazzo in the role of Laney. While Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse is slightly exaggerated in the other direction in terms of depicting social status in grade school, it is an infinitely more honest movie than She's All That.

She's All That is at its best when poking fun at MTV's "The Real World." What it is really doing however is mocking the whole notion of celebrity. Taylor dumps Zach for Brock Hudson (the appropriately over-the-top Matthew Lillard) simply for his celebrity status via "The Real World." She tries to keep him even though Brock turns out to be a fool and egomaniac just because he is (relatively) famous. Taylor is pure caricature, making it easy for us to hate her. Surprisingly however, she gets no real comeuppance.

Screenwriter R. Lee Fleming Jr. seems confused as to what he's after in She's All That. Fleming can't decide whether to go with convention or go against it, and so we wind up with an unconvincing mix of both. Perhaps Fleming decided to omit the usual ending that would see a greater degree of poetic justice simply because it is the usual ending. This however plays out more as a reaction to convention rather than something demanded by the plot elements. Basically, if you're going to give us the stock caricatures, you might as well give us the catharsis.

Other plot problems include Zach's silly personal turmoil that Fleming can never clearly verbalize in the film. It amounts to Zach's father (colorlessly played by Tim Matheson) pressuring Zach to go to Dartmouth, but it's meant to be more than that. What that "more" is is completely amorphous. The same is true of Laney's problem, which has her assuming family responsibilities after her mother's death. But in one of those miraculous conversations found only in the movies, one chat with dad removes years of psychological agitation. Furthermore, this recovery translates into her painting, just in time for her teacher to add it to her recommendations to art schools (which must have lax deadlines since this happens during the week of the prom).

The film can be applauded for not carrying through with a potential damsel-in-distress setup at the end, and Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook do admirable jobs in their roles, but She's All That is still a despicable, idiotic picture.