we did NOT need a she's all that remake (a he's all that review) 👠🐎📱

[Music] we didn't need a she's all that remake it's been a while since we've reviewed something but netflix's latest project was impossible to ignore a gender-swapped remake of the 1999 film she's all that which itself was a contemporary adaptation of the 1913 play pygmalion he's all that star's tick talker turned singer turned actress addison ray in the lead role of paget sawyer and tanner buchanan as the loser she takes under her wing in today's video we're going to be taking a deep dive into he's all that the kind of good the bad and the plain old awful just as a disclaimer not only is this a pretty negative review it'll also spoil the entire movie so stop watching now if that's something you're concerned about and before you start writing your hate comments i want to preface this by saying that i'm not disparaging the work of anyone involved on this project making a movie is very difficult but i don't see the harm in wanting better and if i can come up with some very simple solutions that could have made this movie better hollywood should have been able to as well anyway let's get into it let's start by taking a look at the original film she's all that from 1999 now considered a teen classic for those of you who haven't seen it before or just need a brief refresher the film's plot goes as such zack is the big man on campus he's hot he's rich he's the student body president the soccer team star player and he's dating the school's queen bee his life is perfect or so he thinks after returning from spring break mere weeks before prom and their graduation his girlfriend taylor vaughn dumps him having cheated on him with reality tv star brock hudson played by the always effervescent matthew lillard zack attempts to salvage his pride by insisting that taylor is replaceable and her popularity could be easily replicated by any other girl given the opportunity his friend dean disagrees and the boys make a bet that zack has to turn the unpopular laney boggs into prom queen in only a few weeks zack attempts to befriend lainey but she is immediately put off by him and ignores his advances something he's downright confused by as he's used to getting his way he eventually manages to get her to give him a chance but she continues to resist his charms they hang out on a few other occasions slowly learning more about one another and zack is able to convince her to go to a party at his friend's house and with the help of his little sister we get one of the most iconic makeover transformation sequences of all time may i present the new not improved but different laney box although the evening begins on a high note the night takes a turn after laney is humiliated by the vengeful tailor with her new look lainey becomes popular overnight threatening taylor's chances of prom queen and drawing the attention of dean much to zach chagrin zach and laney have grown closer during this time but in a vindictive move dean deliberately reveals the bet to laney my bet am i a bet am i a [ __ ] bet angered she and zach drift apart and she winds up going to the prom with dean whose plan is to sleep with her and then ditch her attempting to stop this from happening zach goes to laini's house and the two reconcile officially becoming a couple the film ends at graduation where zach arrives naked per the rules of the bet strategically covering his privates with a soccer ball which he throws at laney in a show of affection i'll be honest and say that she's all that isn't my favorite teen flick the cast who are all instantly recognizable today were in very early stages of their careers at the time of filming and as such their acting abilities are noticeably lacking resulting in a lot of lines sounding stilted and forced with many jokes completely failing to land however there's no denying that the film is enjoyable to watch because of the chemistry between the two leads plus freddy prince jr is an absolute perfect choice for zack the premise of the film is beyond predictable we've seen the whole popular person falls in love with the unpopular person trope dozens of times and unfortunately she's all that doesn't add much to it in fact it almost killed the trope in its entirety the film served as a major inspiration for the 2001 parody film not another teen movie which poked fun at numerous aspects of the premise specifically the fact that a pair of overalls and glasses isn't enough to make an actress look unattractive no no no anyone but her not cheney briggs guys she's got glasses and a ponytail oh look at that she's got paint on her overalls what is that guys there's no way she could be prom queen [Music] that's it i did it i'm a miracle worker i'd say that 2003's love don't cost a thing which itself is a remake of 1987's can't buy me love is a far superior film with a similar concept although it admittedly doesn't include the bet storyline and when it comes to modern day adaptations of decades-old content clueless 10 things i hate about you and cruel intentions pulled it off way better with she's all that barely having any similarities to pygmalion apart from the makeover essentially losing the heart of an otherwise very touching story i can understand why she's all that is considered a teen classic but if you remove nostalgia from the equation it's adequate at best so the choice to remake it in the first place was interesting the 2021 film follows in the footsteps of the original almost to a fault and the small changes it does make either serve no purpose or actively make it worse the film starts off by introducing us to paget sawyer a tick-tock beauty influencer with nearly a million followers who spends a supposedly cringe-worthy amount of time on her phone because if it's set in the 2020s and stars teens that needs to be a huge part of the plot as part of her brand image padgett pretends that she's more well-off than she really is with her room being meticulously decorated in comparison to the rest of the house and even going as far as to lie to her friends that she lives in a fancier building paget is currently dating jordan a similarly online famous teen with a justin bieber-esque image and music style one day she visits him on set and discovers that he's cheating on her something that is streamed live to her hundreds of thousands of followers resulting in viral backlash that results in her losing a sponsorship something she needs in order to pay for college hoping to rebuild her online reputation padgett decides to make over a boy at school in the hopes of creating a new and improved version of jordan which results in her making a similar bet as the first film cameron queller supposedly the school's most unpopular boy is chosen as her project and she immediately sets out to befriend him they have a rocky start but after a few hangout sessions together they begin developing feelings for one another with the film attempting to push the narrative that they have more to them than meets the eye one of padgett's friends alden hosts a great gatsby-inspired birthday bash which paget invites cameron to but not before giving him a new haircut and one of the fakest shaves in cinematic history at the party cameron gets in a fight with jordan which he actually winds up winning but he still storms off in a huff afterwards he and padgett managed to make up and cameron shows her his photography which he's previously never shown to anyone britta perry attempts to capture the wars sublime indignities on film unfortunately for brita and millions of photographers like her just because something is in black and white doesn't mean it's good at a school car wash cameron tries to ask padgett to prom but this goes south after alden reveals that he's just a bet resulting in the two having a falling out so i was a bet no no i was a [ __ ] bet padgett decides to go to prom anyway and she winds up winning the crown only to make a speech in front of the entire school about how she's been hiding her true self and prioritizing the wrong things after the speech is finished she leaves only to find cameron waiting outside for her and the two share a dance and a kiss months pass and we discover that paget is just as active on social media as ever but is pivoted to travel content as she and cameron are touring the world having lost the bet paget winds up going through with the punishment getting the word loser tattooed on her arm the end before i go into the things i disliked about he's all that how about we start with the positives first i'm probably in the minority here but i personally don't think addison ray was a bad choice for the role while there's no denying that this was clearly a marketing move with her star power largely influencing her casting for her first ever acting role i think she does a decent job sure paget is clearly inspired by addison herself so getting into character isn't that hard but she plays the part of a sweet and charming teen well enough that i can believe that even in this universe she would be influential online however addison definitely struggles with the more emotional moments and as such anything that is supposed to cause a reaction in the audience doesn't it's something that could definitely be improved upon with time but also i could see her solely sticking to comedy if she wants to continue going this route another thing i actually really enjoyed and he's all that were the characters of quinn and nisha the characters individually are incredibly likable and charming so when they wind up in a relationship by the end of the film it doesn't come off as disingenuous or as a way of catering to modern audiences their role in the film doesn't revolve around their sexuality but in the moments that they are together the chemistry is undeniable it's so rare to see a lesbian relationship especially between younger characters being shown in such an organic and non-fetishistic way honestly i would love to watch a movie that was just about them i'd also like to take a moment to appreciate matthew lillard he returns in this film in an unrelated role and has just as much energy as he did 20 years ago a total scenes stealer and a complete legend now i'm sorry to say it but those were the only positive things i had to say about the new movie now on to the negatives i don't hate the idea of gender-swapped remakes or adaptations but they have to at least bring something else to the table other than this is new because it's a girl not a boy there needs to be a point something that makes a situation unique because the rules are in reverse something that gives the gender swap a purpose i don't know how hollywood hasn't learned this lesson we've seen it fail on numerous occasions ghostbusters overboard the hustle and he's all that is no exception there could have been an interesting commentary on the double standard that women have when it comes to maintaining societal beauty standards or the pressure paget feels as an influencer and how it affects her view of cameron initially but instead it's just a generic what pad story about a popular girl who gives an unpopular boy a makeover and they fall in love even the new emphasis on social media in the film was totally wasted according to hollywood teens and movies today can't just be teens they also have to be tick-tock stars with sponsorships if you're going to make it part of the story at least incorporate it in an interesting way they didn't even do the obvious and have pageant social media obsession be a commentary on the dangers of seeking validation from strangers online like come on it was right there also it must be said but this supposedly modernized movie is just as white as the original at least when it comes to its lead characters sure there are a lot more characters of color in supporting roles but that's what they've always been cast as why not try something new what are you doing here what do you mean well i'm supposed to be the only black guy at this party peace out brother hey honest mistake i just worry about now right one big issue i had with he's all that was in regard to the film's pacing sequence of events and how detached the characters felt to their surroundings something the original film actually did quite well in she's all that we're told on numerous occasions that the school year is coming to an end and the characters act as such expressing trepidation over what their future holds with zach himself stressing over what college he's going to go to by making the timeline clear to the audience we're able to relate to the characters as that form of anxiety is something almost all of us feel at one point in our lives by clearly mapping out the period of time that the film takes place during it makes the bet itself more high stakes as we're counting down the days until prom meanwhile and he's all that everything feels like it happens over the course of a single week leaving us feeling uninvested in the characters relationships to one another we hop from moment to moment without any time to breathe and process what's just happened aside from he's all that having almost no establishing shots the sequences that help provide context by showing the surrounding area the characters also exclusively exist when they're around other people at no point is padgett by herself stewing over her budding feelings towards cameron instead she picks up her phone and starts live streaming we don't see cameron riding horses alone before school showing us his one interest other than photography and this goes for every single character they're never shown by themselves they're always interacting with someone else not only does this come off as cheap as though they wanted to get the most bang for their buck whenever someone was on set but it also keeps us from seeing the characters as individuals they're always a package deal they can never be themselves because they're never alone and will never understand their true motivations this leads to the biggest problem i had with the film its characters or specifically how bland they are at its core the film is meant to be a story of accepting oneself and realizing that the opinions of others is unimportant but the message is completely lost on the audience because the characters and he's all that have absolutely no character development that backs up this message unlike zach who is kinda shallow and self-absorbed at the start of she's all that paget is introduced as a kind and caring person with almost no character flaws she makes her boyfriend gluten-free pastries she helps pay her mom's bills and is incredibly nice to her followers even her fondness for beauty isn't portrayed as vain or vapid just something she's genuinely interested in and it's not like she's doing any of these things for her image but seemingly out of the goodness of her own heart the character's few faults like the fact that she's lying about being wealthy isn't important to the plot or her interactions with other characters at no point do we see her nervous about inviting people over to her house or get caught lying about her mom's job or acting embarrassed about not being able to afford something her character being poor isn't an actual issue until the film deems it necessary and afterwards it's never mentioned again even her reasons for the bet come off as less emotional and hurtful in comparison to zack he wants to fix his bruised ego maintain his reputation at school and get revenge on his ex-girlfriend padgett's main motivation for the bet is to regain her online following and sponsorships allowing her to pay for college this makes her reasoning not only logical but far less cruel and as a result when she and cameron fight it's even more exhausting to watch than the original because the circumstances are easily explainable the movie also does a terrible job of explaining why paget's thing is makeovers like sure she's a beauty influencer but what does that actually have to do with makeovers while it isn't necessary to show jordan before she made him popular we could have seen her interact with other characters who she'd previously given makeovers to like random girls at school or her followers instead she just says she's a makeover expert and we're supposed to believe her at the very least they could have shown a home video of her as a tween with a drastically different look so we could infer that she was talking about herself not denying that that is a problematic trope in itself but at least it would have served a purpose in this film and we could have seen her character admitting to something embarrassing other than getting a pimple something that literally every teenager gets the film does a similarly awful job of setting up paget's popularity something that's supposed to be one of her defining characteristics we're just meant to assume that because she's popular online she's also popular at school but over the course of the film we only see her hang out with two people regularly and she's only treated with reverence by cameron's little sister we don't have a scene like we did and she's all that where people stare at her in the hallway or obey her every command if she really had a million tick tock followers she'd sure as hell have a lot more people surrounding her clout chasers at the very least which could also lead to a more heartfelt moment where she realizes she doesn't have any real friends because she's never shown them the real her all of this shoddy character development results in her big heart to heart at the end of the film falling completely flat if you want a character to learn the error of their ways you actually need to give them some negative personality traits she ends the film in the exact same place that she started in my opinion it should have been cameron who had to have the change of heart in a grand speech one because it would have been an interesting change from the original and two because he genuinely sucks come on look i mean there's a perfectly untouched orange next to a discarded math textbook i mean it speaks volumes right does it posers call this music no one would have ever heard of dn arbor sir ansel adams if they just hid in their dark room all day what i just can't believe you actually know those names i'm joking i was just taking a picture you take pictures what's the difference too vast to even explain isn't she the one who tried to hit me with her ukulele you called her music twee and derivative well it is within seconds of being introduced it was obvious that he had not like other guys syndrome although laney is a social pariah as an art obsessed loner cameron is just a pretentious [ __ ] who goes out of his way to make people dislike him at one point he even complains about his kid's sister not wanting to hang out with him at school and then proceeds to yell across the entire campus that she needs to take laxatives in what world would that make someone like you at least in lainey's case she's minding her own business when kids go out of their way to bully her so we as the audience want to root for her even if she's an outcast whereas with cameron his mistreatment almost seems like justifiable comeuppance sure they eventually reveal that cameron keeps people at a distance because of parental trauma but it still doesn't fully explain his behavior as he doesn't try to keep people away who are actively trying to befriend him just the people who dislike him to begin with in spite of his perceived anti-social tendencies it takes significantly less time for paget to befriend him when compared to zack's near-constant uphill battle with laney by their second time talking they're already laughing up a storm and throwing horse poop at each other and he readily accepts an invitation to a karaoke party said party is also the moment where we and his friend nisha realize he's starting to develop feelings for paget but it literally comes out of nowhere she's singing a katy perry song something he has absolutely no interest in and it gets even weirder when he decides to go on stage and sing with her to save her from embarrassment in front of not only a giant crowd of people but also thousands of people online something his supposedly anti-social media character should be completely against at least when zack performed at laney's theater it made sense for his character because he's confident and extroverted to begin with in cameron's case it feels like he turned into a totally different person this off-brand behavior happens with cameron on quite a few occasions notably during the makeover process where he not only willingly goes shopping with paget for the party but also lets her shave his face and cut his hair so he fits the great gatsby theme this boy has clearly been growing out his hair for a while now so his sudden willingness to go completely short just for a party is bizarre to say the least i wish they'd done something where paget had offhandedly said that she liked short hair earlier in the film that way his growing feelings for her would influence the decision it would show him taking initiative to become the kind of guy she likes not just letting her do all the work by the end of the film cameron is still the same entitled dude from the beginning and when he and paget do finally reconcile it's hardly satisfying because he does absolutely nothing except wait outside of the prom for her with a horse at the very least they could have had him run in and join her on stage and give a speech about being afraid to get close to people but that he was willing to give people chances again considering the two lead characters had such poorly developed personalities i don't think it will surprise you when i say the antagonists are similarly boring there are also a lot of moments that completely take you out of the movie and make you go huh the ridiculous amount of product placement being one of them this movie is basically one giant ad for pizza hut eos lip balm and doritos but nothing is as jarring to see as paget doing a tick tock dance while singing karaoke like i get it you cast addison rey and wanted to appeal to the kids but at least make it make sense the dance-off at prom which was weirdly long was enough the karaoke dance wasn't necessary in the slightest especially because all it did was make it more obvious that it was filmed in front of a green screen now here's the moment that a lot of you were probably waiting for let's talk about the costume design because boy oh boy do i have thoughts on it now obviously a movie like this isn't trying to get an oscar but that doesn't mean that the costuming isn't important the costume designer for the film denise wingate has previously worked on a cinderella story the sweetest thing and crucially the original she's all that so i was sorely disappointed to not see any of the excitement and experimentation in this film that she's displayed in her past work now i'll be honest and say that i'm partial to late 90s fashion so i really enjoy the costume design in 1999 she's all that but it is to be noted that it wasn't meant to be amazing or fashion forward it wasn't a clueless situation the characters in the movie were meant to look like the average teen albeit leaning into their stereotypes a touch taylor vaughn wears tight-fitted clothes and feminine colors as an ode to her role as the queen bee zach wears a lot of sportswear to solidify his role as the big man on campus and lainey wears a lot of vintage and oversized pieces to show how out of place she is their costumes make sense not just in the world of the film but perfectly represent the characters as well he's all that forgets about this entirely keep in mind that paget is meant to be a tick-tock star with almost a million followers so i can guarantee that she would be receiving free clothing from trendy fashion brands but instead she's dressed like a 30 year old sunday school teacher in 2014. her character shouldn't be wearing gold wedge espadrilles chevron dresses waterfall cardigans and prom dresses that look like they came from wish even if you make the argument that her character is poor and therefore can't afford expensive things i repeat she's an influencer she can get free stuff even from a storytelling point of view this costume design is lacking sure it's pink which is representative of her feminine hobbies and sweet personality but that's it at the very least you could have had her character dress outlandishly at school in expensive pieces to better sell the fact that she's pretending to be someone she's not and then at home or in private with cameron she dresses down and more comfortably i was similarly upset with cameron's wardrobe maybe this is just my age showing but i don't even think he dressed that poorly to begin with while it's perhaps not cutting edge for teen fashion today he literally just looks like your average grungy guy the only thing that doesn't look great is the hair and that's only because it's a really bad wig which is why he's always wearing a beanie or a hat in the movie a more fitting wardrobe choice would have been if he was wearing a stained oversized t-shirt and cargo pants they should have made him look like he didn't give a damn but instead he actually looks pretty put together especially when compared to some of the other boys jordan's wardrobe in the film is outright horrendous now it's been a while since i've stepped foot on a high school campus but i'm guessing the average 17 year old boy doesn't look like he's about to audition for the jersey shore acid wash jeans versace boxers and neon animal print come on it's not just a decade late in regard to male fashion trends but considering this character is meant to be a social media star and someone paget made over he should look good what he's wearing also ages him i honest to god thought he looked 30 the first time i saw him his wardrobe does get across the point that he's an [ __ ] but aside from that it doesn't make much sense considering his age career economic status and location i think a streetwear inspired hypebeast look would have been far more appropriate i'm not sure why this mediocre costume design keeps happening with contemporary netflix shows and movies but do any of these people have any idea how teens today dress now i know that this video came off as harsh but that's because i genuinely care teen movies can be good hell we have evidence of that but in today's era of kissing booths and afters it almost feels like people have given up hope and have settled for mediocrity something i simply refuse to do just because they're created with younger people in mind doesn't mean teen movies can't be well written with meaningful stories that can continue to be relevant for years and years to come these films are meant to speak to young adults the struggles they're facing and the hardships they're going to have to overcome these movies aren't supposed to talk down to and baby them he's all that and many movies like it have the potential to be better and we shouldn't settle for less what did you think of he's all that i hope you enjoyed this video don't forget to like and subscribe and i'll see you soon bye [Music]

Channel: ModernGurlz

Views: 754,415

Keywords: style, modern gurlz, 90s fashion, fashion, movie review, movie commentary, moderngurlz, review, movies, Film analysis, movie analysis, analysis, video essay, trivia, movie reviews, tv theory, cinema, television, entertainment, deep meaning, tv answers, disney, disney live action, live action reboot, ranking, ranking movies, costume design, fashion analysis, style analysis, addison rae, she's all that, 90s movies, costume analysis, netflix movies, he's all that, he's all that review

Id: UxrONPIJiwk

Length: 27min 22sec (1642 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021