She’s All That

Cast: Freddie Prinze Jr

Studio: Sony

Rating: 6/10

At a very trendy high school in Los Angeles, California where the popular girls are into their appearances and guys, Laney’s interest lies in art. Her world takes a three-sixty when the most popular guy in school, Zack Siler, makes a bet with his buddies that he can turn her into the prom queen. He has six weeks to work the transformation, but he doesn’t take into account that playing with the heart is dangerous.

From the beginning, director Rob Iscov makes mistakes. The first one was casting Jodi Lynn O’Keefe as snobby Taylor Vaughn. She doesn’t fit the description of the beautiful, first-class bitch. Taylor dumps Zack Siler (Freddie Prinze Jr.) for Brock Hudson (Matthew Lilliard from MTV’s Real World). Zack feels that he has to restore his reputation and foolishly bets his friend, Dean (Paul Walker), that he can take any girl in the school and turn her into the prom queen. You know who the lucky girl is.

Laney Boggs (Rachael Raleigh Cook) doesn’t buy it. She doesn’t believe that Zack, the student body president and soccer jock, likes her. Zack allows his ego to get in the way of knowing what he is getting himself into. He soon finds out that there is something wonderful behind the thick retro glasses and paint stained clothing.

This film is the ’90’s version of Sixteen Candles. However, Iscov clearly shows that he knows nothing of current high school society when he portrays the two stereotypical cliques as the popular, vogue snobs opposing the all time lifeless personalities. In the film, we see that the popular students party and drink all of the time while the geeks work at fast food restaurants. Even I know that high school isn’t a black and white fantasy like this.

Iscov did manage to do well with a couple of scenes. In one scene, she is at work. After a short conversation with Zack, she attempts to take a gentleman’s order. After Laney tells him what his options are, he says, “Super size my balls.” Another good scene was when Laney’s hard working dad (Kevin Pollak) is answering all of the jeopardy questions incorrectly. I watched the prom scene in a theater full of teenagers. Iscov wanted everyone to think that this was a really awesome part of the movie by putting on a remarkably choreographed routine that had some solid dancers. The scene was good, but still was unrealistic and propagated the illusion of what a high school prom is today.

I liked Laney from the very beginning. She was naturally beautiful and charming, but I didn’t see her character develop at all throughout the movie. Yes, she did get a million-dollar make over with a sexy silk dress, but still she remained lifeless. She’s all that because she was just stunning. This is a fantasy from the beginning. The audience knows what happened to Cinderella. I think that this movie is worth seeing just because of the comical prom scene.

+ kim hutchison