# She's All That (1999)

### reviewed by
Mr. Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss

    SHE'S ALL THAT

For me, the problem with a movie like She's All That is not that it's about high school kids and revolves around events like The Prom, which in real life most people I've come across never really cared much about. It's not even that the plot involves a Most Popular Guy In School who makes a bet that he can turn the Misfit Girl With Glasses into a prom queen, but then she takes off her glasses and turns out to be beautiful and then he falls in love with her for real and then he doesn't know what to do about the bet and can he really be honest with her and oh what a horrible dilemma. My problem with this and many other teen movies is that as far as I can tell it is written by someone who never went to high school and also has had very little experience in everyday situations with humans.

I can accept that not all high school experiences are going to be like mine, and maybe there are schools out there where everyone knows who's rich and who's not and what occupation everyone else's parents have. And maybe at some schools the class president really is the prize catch and the most popular guy in school, instead of some guy who wears a tie and quotes Saturday Night Live skits all the time and spends most of his time consorting with the faculty about student government type stuff that will never have any effect on anyone or anything, ever. There may even be a high school somewhere that has a radio station broadcast over its intercom system with a student (in this case, Usher) who never has to go to class because he is always spinning records and doing gossipy shout-outs ala The Love Daddy in Do the Right Thing.

But I can't accept scenes like the one where Class President finds two bullies (one of whom appears to be at least 32 years old) putting pubic hair on another kid's pizza. Without even a threat of violence, he tells the bullies that they are going to eat the pizza themselves. Apparently having no other choice, the two swallow their pride and swallow the pubes in front of the entire cafeteria. I don't think this was supposed to be a Jedi mind trick, or an exaggeration of the Mighty Power of the Student Government. Perhaps it was an attempt at a Farrellian over-the-top grossout scene. Whatever it's supposed to be, it does not follow any laws of reality, heightened reality or satire that I'm aware. It just makes no god damned sense. It's hard to get a kick out of Mr. President standing up for the little guy when all you can think is that even if these two overaged bullies couldn't beat the holy living crap out of the President, they could definitely laugh in his face and walk away. I also can't accept what happens when the life long best friend of the All That Girl of the title finds out that All That Girl's date is secretly using her for sex. He runs right past his endangered best friend and instead tries to warn the class president, who he doesn't even know. There are many scenes like this - one involving All That Girl abandoning a customer at her wacky theme restaurant of employment and having a long talk with the Class President character who she hasn't even established a relationship with yet - and for me anyway they are painful to watch. I'm not talking about little things like in Varsity Blues when Billy Bob the Wacky Fat Guy has a heart-to-heart with Dawson and by the next morning at school has somehow obtained a cat scan without an appointment - I'm talking about complete disregard for realistic human behavior. Watching these unbelievable characters avoid the obvious behaviors of reasonable human beings is like one of those dreams where you keep trying to find a place but every time you turn a corner or open a door you are further away than before. A problem that occasionally pervades the movie that is more common for its genre (especially the TV show Dawson's Creek) is a preposterous amount of self awareness that, again, doesn't match up with the way we know human beings really act and think. I don't know if I can ever take another scene like the one in She's All That where the Most Popular Girl In School (who no one likes) arrogantly boasts that she will be elected Prom Queen because (what the fuck!?) her mom and cousin were Prom Queens. Not only do I not believe that people really think of themselves as the most powerful and popular girl in school, but I also don't believe that there is any high school anywhere where the other students are aware of and/or care in any way that so and so's mother was a Prom Queen in 1971. This kind of moronic shit is inexcusable. I want an apology and an explanation. Now.

This movie also has unusually bad characterization for its genre. I'm sure you're supposed to like the characters and give something approaching a rat's ass about their problems. But the All That Girl is introduced as someone who constantly interrupts others to spout cliches about pollution and third world countries, and who spends her free time doing Movie Style Performance Art with two dwarves and a guy in his underwear. The performance art scene is particularly painful. It's done in that same style you've seen a million times where you know it's not at all like real performance art (I mentioned the dwarves, right?). But it goes on for a good minute or two, and it's not funny, and then when All That Girl turns out to be a part of the troupe, it's hard to tell whether it was a really unfunny parody of bad performance art or a really bad imitation of good performance art. Class President, for his part, calls it "really, really good," and he seems sincere. But watching the scene feels like watching a really bad open mic night and trying not to be rude, and then it feels like sort of a betrayal when you realize that the scene was not supposed to be interminable.

Sarah Michelle Gellar does a brief, uncredited sit-on, apparently continuing her struggle to not let her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer typecast her as someone who only appears in really good stuff. Also slumming is Anna Paquin, who I didn't even recognize as the little sister/makeover artist. In retrospect I'm very impressed by her American accent, but she sure had more to work with in that surprisingly good goose movie.

She's All That makes the atrocious Can't Hardly Wait look powerful and emotionally resonant, but I won't try to claim that my generation had better teen movies, or today's teens are idiots who like crap, or any such nonsense. Filmmakers have made crap for teens for as long as there have been filmmakers who make crap. Movies like Pump Up the Volume may have been closer to my world view than these prom-queen-centric movies, but they were just as insane in their depiction of reality. (Every social clique in the group rallies behind the eccentric pirate radio misfit to overcome the pure unadulterated evil of the grownups. Yeah, I wish.) At least these kids have Clueless, and there haven't been any Licensed To Drive type movies lately. More importantly, it would be a bad idea to wish today's filmmakers would try to learn from the teen movies that I most cherish, because that may be what leads to upcoming films like Carrie 2: The Sequel That Proves There Is No God and Jawbreaker (whose writer-director has clearly seen Heathers as many times as I have).

    --Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss

"I write rhymes so fresh I try to bite my own verses." --Tash

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