SHE'S ALL THAT (Miramax) Starring: Freddie Prinze Jr., Rachael Leigh Cook, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker, Kevin Pollak, Kieran Culkin. Screenplay: R. Lee Fleming Jr. Producers: Peter Abrams, Robert L. Levy and Richard N. Gladstein. Director: Robert Iscove. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 91 min. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Cinderella ain't what she used to be...and at the same time, she's exactly what she's always been. Like no other fairy tale set-up, it sets a modern sensibility to itching -- how does one respond to the idea that a woman must be physically transformed to be worthy of love? This male chauvinist Pygmalion has taken many forms over the years, from MY FAIR LADY to PRETTY WOMAN, but SHE'S ALL THAT may have found the perfect setting: high school. If there's anywhere you can sell the idea that _everyone_ believes they must be physically transformed to be worthy of love, this would be the place.
So much for the sociological context -- SHE'S ALL THAT stinks like last month's cheese left on a particularly sunny windowsill. Freddie Prinze Jr. stars as Zack Siler, senior class president, soccer star and all-around golden boy at Southern California's Harrison High. On the first day back from spring break, Zack is dumped by long-time girlfriend Taylor (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe) when she hooks up with a former "Real World" cast member (Matthew Lillard). The humiliated Zack claims he can turn any girl in school into a prom queen, a boast that turns into a bet when Zack's buddy Dean (Paul Walker) chooses gloomy art geek Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook) as the subject of the experiment. And thus the eight-week countdown clock to personal growth and true love begins.
I'm sure that all parties involved in SHE'S ALL THAT thought they really were telling a Cinderella story, particularly director Robert Iscove, who helmed the popular TV-movie version with Brandy a couple years back. This, of course, is one of those Cinderella stories where the poor little girl is really a supermodel whose paint-spattered overalls hide a slinky va-va-voom waiting to emerge. Rachael Leigh Cook wears her horn-rims like someone trying desperately not to appear beautiful despite her porcelain features, somewhat dampening that willing suspension of disbelief. There's little if any chemistry between Prinze and Cook, no development of what would make their mutual attraction grow...in short, nothing that would appeal to a viewer not of the same age as the protagonists.
Essentially, however, SHE'S ALL THAT isn't remotely interested in appealing to anyone outside that audience, because it's really a teen fantasy. For girls, it offers the prospect that, even if you're a social pariah now, you too can turn into a popular beauty with the right haircut and a sympathetic stud by your side; for boys, it suggests that anyone is a hottie waiting to happen if you point her in the right direction. There's even assurance for the academically brilliant (Zack faces the dilemma of choosing between seven Ivy League schools) that your life is complicated, too. And in between, it derives belly laughs from people eating pizza sprinkled with pubic hair. It's humorless and derivative, but it _understands_ you, fellow high school student. Like John Hughes crossed with Bill Clinton, SHE'S ALL THAT feels your adolescent pain.
Thank heaven for Matthew Lillard, who invests his spin on "Real World's" Puck with enough egotistical energy to rouse SHE'S ALL THAT from its stupor periodically. His scenes, including a manic look-at-me dance at a party, are about the only aspect of the film not pasted together from every other teen angst-comedy you've ever seen. This one compounds its tedium with a near-suffocating boredom, as Iscove can't even generate energy to drive its familiar narrative forward. SHE'S ALL THAT just meanders sweetly towards its inevitable conclusion, telling its viewers exactly what they want to hear: that someday their prince will come, and all it will take to get him is a sausage-casing red dress.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Cinder-ailments: 3.
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