A gender-swapped remake that is not all that
There should come a time when original movies should never be remade and Netflix, unfortunately, did not consider that with their remake of She’s All That, with a gender swap.
Netflix’s original movie, He’s All That, begins when popular influencer Padgett Sawyer discovers her semi-famous boyfriend has cheated on her, causing her to lose a sponsorship and followers.
Scheming to win everything back, Padgett makes a bet with her friend, Alden, that she can make anyone popular and help them win the title of prom king.
With her friends choosing nerdy outcast, Cameron Kweller, to be her project, it takes Padgett everything she has as well as revealing her true self for Cameron to trust her.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a cheesy rom-com without the “unexpected” romance between the popular girl and nerdy boy. Eventually, Padgett realizes that Cameron is more than just a bet to her and begins to rethink things (rather quickly by the way).
Now, I am not one to hate remakes because I will admit there have been some pretty decent ones that have come out within the past decade such as The Parent Trap, Carrie and Murder on the Orient Express. But, if a remake is going to be done, it should be done right… especially starting with the cast.
There were a lot of things wrong with this movie, but the biggest problem is Addison Rae. Throughout the entire film her performance was emotionless and overall a disaster that is hard to watch.
While watching Addison throughout her performance, you cannot help but feel that this whole movie was a pawn to boost her social media status. Obviously, this film was more than a project to her than a passion as she puts no effort into making anything believable.
Although many of us grew up with Maddison Pettis and have grown to love her, I can say that her performance as Alden could have been better as well. Maddison playing the cliché mean girl took it to another level as she takes the phrase “cliché” too far, leaving little effort and creativity available.
While many of the performances could have been better, there are a few alumni members from the original that make this movie a little bearable to watch. Matthew Lillard and Rachael Leigh Cook do make appearances that make you laugh and feel a bit of nostalgia.
Another aspect of this movie that makes it hard to watch is the script and screenplay itself.
It is overly cliché and rushed and contains no originality nor creativity in the writing. There is nothing to keep the audience engaged, the character development was there but it happened at a ridiculously fast pace.
Even though the main leads had only known each other for two days they spoke to each other like they had been best friends for years. Their relationship went from 0 to 100 really fast. It was unrealistic and didn’t match either of their character’s personalities.
I would not recommend watching this Netflix original unless you are fond of exceedingly cliché rom-coms. If you are remotely interested in watching this film, it can be streamed on Netflix.