She's The Man

She’s the Man is the most recent of a long-line of films employing the gag of having a female pretend to be male. Many of these films are compared to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It’s probably about time for those comparisons to stop. Shakespeare wasn’t the first writer to concoct a story of gender confusion, so it’s probably about time we stop pinning all of this on him. In addition, if writers claim Shakespeare as their inspiration, they should put a fair amount of effort into making sure that their adaptation is at least somewhat inspired. She’s the Man is not terrible, but there’s hardly anything unique, original, or even memorable about the movie. Instead, it plays for the safe laugh and only occasionally delivers. She’s the Man does have several things going for it. Amanda Bynes is a likeable star. For a lot of 16 year old females, she’s probably easier to relate to then a fair amount of other young Hollywood starlets. As such, she’s easy to root for as displaced soccer player Viola. The story follows Viola, whose private school has recently dropped girl’s soccer, which leads her to attempt to earn a place on the rival school’s boy’s team. To do this, she assumes the identity of her brother Sebastian. Sebastian was supposed to be enrolling at the school, but instead he goes to London for two weeks. Viola quickly becomes a social outcast, since she is clueless about how to be a guy. Fortunately, she gets some of her girlfriends to help “Sebastian” gain credibility with her roommate, Duke, and other members of the team. After this, lots of romances get mixed-up, and a progression of sight gags and gender jokes ensues. Jared Myers helps people find movie reviews that match the personality of each individual reader. To read other reviews go to his web site at http://www.moviematchonline.com This film uses the gender switch as the basis for virtually all of its jokes. There really are no subplots or amusing side characters to speak of. As for the gender jokes, there’s nothing really amusing that stands out. The first couple minutes get a few laughs, as the audience sees how poorly Bynes imitates a boy. Afterwards, there are a couple laughs based on how the other characters react to Viola’s attempts to blend in. David Cross provides a few laughs as Principal Gold. When Gold sees Viola adjusting her wig, it leads to an amusing conversation about male pattern baldness. Overall, laughs were fairly scarce in the theatre I was in. She’s the Man also requires a complete suspension of disbelief. Simply put, there is no way any of this would work. Bynes looks too feminine too pass for a boy. In addition, the movie makes a couple of attempts to explain how Bynes gets around things (like showering after soccer practice), but overall it ignores how she can get around playing on a boy’s team without being discovered. In addition, Viola looks nothing like her brother (James Kirk) which becomes a problem for the viewer later in the movie. For those of you interested in the sports scenes, Bynes has done an admirable job at picking up some basic skills. Still, when you watch her play, anyone who has played knows that there is no way she could cut it with an upper level male team. So the film is not at all plausible, but that’s not necessarily a problem. This film is targeted at a younger audience that is just looking for a few laughs in their movies. Fair enough. There may be some 16 year old girls who will enjoy this movie (there a lot of shots of Duke without his shirt to appeal to this audience). If they’re not that picky with movies, and laugh easily, then some may enjoy this movie. Most of the sixteen year old boys I know will probably want to steer clear. If you need a teen movie for a date, go rent Mean Girls or one of the teen movies that put a little thought into their jokes. For everyone else, you could do worse than She’s the Man, but keeping the price of admission in your pocket is one way to do better. Jared Myers helps people find movie reviews that match the personality of each individual reader. To read other reviews go to his web site at http://www.moviematchonline.com Read more at: http://www.ArticlePros.com/arts_and_entertainment/movie_reviews/article-18026.html.

 

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