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Acting
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Directing
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Story
Starring: Addison Rae, Tanner Buchanan, Madison Pettis
Director: Mark Waters
Running Time: 91 mins
He’s All That is an American film about a popular high school girl who takes on a bet to transform an outsider boy into the school’s prom king, but soon begins to develop a strong and unexpected bond with him.
A generally insufferable affair that shares very little of the innocent yet raunchy charisma of its late ’90s counterpart, He’s All That is a bit of a tough watch for anybody, owing to a lack of humour, interesting characters or emotional depth at any point.
Almost styled as a throwaway rom-com even by distributors Netflix, this is one of the laziest remakes I’ve seen from Hollywood (which is really saying something), loosely keeping to the original plot while removing much of the energy than made it entertaining.
Of course, the film attempts to ‘update’ the morals presented in She’s All That with a more earnest story about friendship as well as a swap in gender roles, but there really is little incentive as a viewer to care about anything that the film is trying to say due to the fact that everyone on screen is far from interesting in any way.
From a vacuous female lead whose redemption arc is far from convincing to a low-energy and quite simply boring male lead who offers nothing in terms of innocent likability nor charisma, there’s nothing about He’s All That which you would in any way call ‘entertaining’, rather playing up to all of the most insufferable clichés of teen romantic comedies.
In its attempts to update its predecessor, He’s All That actually feels like a major step backwards, with a one-dimensional screenplay made worse by poor performances, dull humour and nothing in the shape of charismatic or emotional storytelling. So, that’s why I’m giving it a 5.4 overall.
