She's All That

Movies based in American high schools are seldom noted for their originality, but the lack of imagination on display in She's All That still boggles the mind - next to this, the likes of Breakfast Club could qualify as masterpiece cinema.

A yuppy/California/Nineties re-working of the Pygmalion scenario, She's All That stars Freddie Prinze Jr. as a vapidly bland - but good-natured - high-school student who ranks at the top of the school's social hierarchy, thanks to his good looks and his athletic skill etc. etc.

Egged on by his mates after his bitchy prom-queen girlfriend (Anna Paquin) has dumped him, he makes a bet that he can seduce one of the school's mousier females in time for the annual prom, and turn her into a superbabe. Ergo, the school brainbox (a bespectacled Rachel Leigh Cook) becomes the unlikely target of his attentions, as the plot spins off on its woefully predictable path. One obvious credibility problem with this whole scenario: as you will have seen from the posters, Rachel Leigh Cook is an absolute vision of loveliness, and while a barrage of unflattering make-up and costume design is deployed early on in a vain attempt to obscure the fact, it won't fool anyone for a minute.

If the film had intended to seriously address the issue it purports to explore (the deadly-serious business of social snobbishness and school bullying) it would have demanded more appropriate casting, but for all its delusions of seriousness, it is infinitely closer in spirit and substance to Neighbours than it is to Welcome To The Dollhouse.

Soulless, predictable, unadventurous, and considerably more cynical than it seems to realise, this film is an absolute waste of everyone's time and money.