Movie Review - He's All That

Ironically, this film was released the same weekend as Candyman (2021), which is a sequel to a popular 90's film. This film is also a sequel to a popular 90's film, that film being She's All That (1999). Candyman was a horror flick, whereas She's All That was a teen romantic comedy. When She's All That was released, it was a hit, becoming number-one in the box office and its signature song "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer being in the top ten on the Billboard charts for 16 weeks. It made stars or celebrities out of most of the members of its cast or it solidified the potential of each actor in it. It then went on to become the icon or symbol for teen rom-coms.

Hollywood has gotten in the habit of doing sequels or remakes where the protagonist gets gender-swapped. Normally, most films that get sequels or remakes have male protagonists, so the updates get female leads instead. Ghostbusters (2016) and What Men Want (2019) are recent examples of that gender-swapping. For She's All That, it doesn't really work because the 1999 film already had a female protagonist. The actress who played that protagonist was Rachael Leigh Cook who returns for this film. Yes, the point-of-view is seemingly from the male protagonist, played by Freddie Prinze Jr., but that 1999 film did a good job of balancing the scales and making Cook's character as much of the lead as Prinze.

Addison Rae is a social media personality. She's only 20 and she has 81 million followers on TikTok, making her the third most-followed individual on that platform. She's also been named as the highest-earning personality on TikTok. Here, Rae plays Padgett Sawyer, a social media personality whose a senior in high school and has a lot of followers on TikTok, so it's rather perfect casting or the screenwriter tailored the character specifically for Rae. She concerns herself with giving makeup and fashion tips online. She's currently dating another TikTok star or social media personality who is the stereotypical bro, only worried about his brand and building more followers.

Tanner Buchanan (Cobra Kai and Designated Survivor) co-stars as Cameron Kweller a fellow senior who doesn't engage in social media at all. He doesn't even have a smartphone. He instead is an aspiring photographer, but he's into traditional photography. He develops negatives in his own dark room. He also has a love of horses, so he's more into nature than technology. It's another thing to differentiate him from Padgett, making them seem more like opposites. The 1999 film was all about taking one of the least popular kids in school and making that person the winner at prom.

This film is guilty of the same weird calculation as its predecessor. Cameron is supposed to be the least popular kid who gets the makeover into a prom winner. As in the 1999 film, the unpopular kid is supposed to be unattractive in a conventional sense or is simply a person who isn't as superficial or is a person who's more artistic not athletic and is more intellectual or dorky but dorky in the way that Clark Kent is dorky, meaning a hunk who just happens to wear glasses. Cameron is the selfsame. He's basically a hunk. He doesn't wear glasses but he does have long scraggly hair, which is clearly a wig.

The weird calculation is that the unpopular kid has to get a superficial makeover to make them look more attractive in the conventional sense when the ultimate point is that the makeover doesn't or shouldn't matter. It also feels more pointless when the distance is not that far. For Clark Kent to become Superman, he simply has to take off his glasses. Here, that distance is almost as short. Cameron basically has to get a haircut and basically take off his shirt because he's already super-ripped and muscular. The fact is that Padgett almost considers making over a fat, Filipino student named Sebastian Woo, played by Romel De Silva, and if she had gone with him, that would've been more to the point.

None of this would be as open to criticism if the film had done a better job of developing the other relationships. The 1999 film did a better job of developing the characters around the main romance. The family members in the 1999 film like the father to Cook's character or the sister to Prinze's character were better developed. Here, those characters are given what feel like too short a shrift. I'm not familiar with social media celebrities, so the casting here might be impressive to a certain subset of people. The 1999 film had Usher Raymond who was a multi-platinum and Grammy-nominated artist. Looking back on that 1999 cast, there was Paul Walker, Gabrielle Union and Kevin Pollack, all actors I admire to some degree. I'm not sure 20 years from now, anyone will look back at this cast as fondly. If one wants a detailed critique and breakdown of what's wrong, check out ModernGurlz's YouTube video.

Rated TV-14.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 31 mins.

Available on Netflix.