She's All That Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

She's All That Blu-ray Movie Review

She's all what?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 2, 2012

When the Rachael Leigh Cook character in She’s All That tells the Freddie Prinze, Jr. character that she “feels like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman” (minus “all the hooker stuff”), she’s referencing just one of a veritable universe of projects which at the very least can be tangentially tied to the ancient myth of Pygmalion, the Cypriot sculptor who fell in love with one of his creations, bringing it to life (with a little help from Venus). The myth of Pygmalion has been a source of inspiration for countless artists in virtually every genre of the Fine Arts, from painting to poetry to literature to ballet. But probably the myth’s best known adaptation is the same titled play by George Bernard Shaw, a play which of course updated the setting to include an English linguistics expert named Henry Higgins attempting to gentrify Cockney flower salesgirl Eliza Doolittle. That play (later filmed with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller) in turn became the basis for the much beloved Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady (interestingly, Lerner and Loewe’s chief competitors in the Broadway musical arena at that time, Rodgers and Hammerstein, had also attempted to musicalize Shaw’s play, but had given up on it a few years prior to Lerner and Loewe finally carrying the torch). Shaw’s Pygmalion and the musicalized My Fair Lady are in fact almost allegorical treatments of the original myth, and it’s in fact the now little remembered Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash (yes, that Ogden Nash) musical One Touch of Venus which really most closely approximates the original story. (The Broadway One Touch of Venus featured a star burnishing performance from Mary Martin, but when the property was Hollywoodized, most of its score was jettisoned and the role of Venus went to Ava Gardner). A huge number of films— including that Julia Roberts movie alluded to above—can trace their heritage at least partially to either Pygmalion (the myth) or Pygmalion (the play or film), and that includes the unassuming teen hit from a bit over a decade ago, She’s All That. To say that scenarist R. Lee Fleming, Jr. is no George Bernard Shaw should certainly come as no huge surprise, but the film has its fleeting charms and should bring back some warm memories for those who were adolescents or teens circa 1999 and may have had a less critical (or jaundiced) eye toward the film’s failings then than they might have now as cynical adults.

Prinze portrays high school jock and all around Big Man on Campus Zack Siler, a kid who excels at seemingly everything (including perhaps unbelievably, academics) and who has the world at his beck and call. Zack has a rude wake up call early in the film when his similarly “gifted” girlfriend Taylor (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe) returns from Spring Break with the devastating news that she has fallen for the boorish star of a recent iteration of MTV’s The Real World, the hilariously named Brock Hudson (Matthew Lillard). That sets Zack into a momentary tailspin as he wonders if his place in high school society will be threatened, especially with the impending Senior Prom, but he’s soon challenged to a bet by his buddy Dean (Paul Walker), who wagers that Zack is incapable of transforming a low on the totem pole classmate into a girl who could actually give Taylor a run for her Homecoming Queen money. Zack of course rises to the challenge, and Dean selects the nerdy art student Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook) as this film’s Eliza Doolittle.

There’s a slightly smarmy subtext to quite a bit of She’s All That which neither the Shaw play nor its various offshoots seemed to have, despite the similarities of the plot. While Eliza may not fully realize the ramifications of the wager into which Higgins has entered, she surely is aware she’s being made over, for better or worse, and that makeover indeed provides a lot, if not most, of the conflict of the piece, much of which stems from Eliza’s own conflicted feelings about her transformation. In She’s All That, the bet angle is handled completely predictably, with Laney unaware of what’s going on until a third act betrayal and denouement which leads to a brief tempestuous falling out between Laney and Zack before the equally predictable happy ending. But in this setting, the whole transformation of Laney from a despised nerd to a contender for the title of most popular girl in school seems a bit gag-reflex inducing, especially considering the rude behavior of virtually everyone in the film who’s already popular. This smarminess is only partially mitigated by the (yes, predictable) turn of events where Zack ends up really falling for Laney, making the bet unpalatable to even him.

That leaves the film precariously balanced between outlandish comedy (mostly courtesy of a buffoonish performance by Lillard as the Real World lout) and an attempt at “meaningful” introspection, as in a kind of weird but quirkily effective sequence where Zack attends a performance art outing with Laney and ends up doing a little routine with a hackey-sack that mirrors his own internal conflict about where his life is going. Unfortunately, the film is neither laugh out loud funny enough nor essentially dramatically compelling enough to ever make a convincing case in one direction or the other, and while amiable enough, She’s All That often just kind of lies there, waiting for the next predictable shoe to drop.

This is a film that no doubt appealed to a certain age group when it came out, younger folks who were swayed by the stars’ charisma and the sweet romantic notion that even a social outcast could be “remade” into someone with everything at her beck and call. But is that a message that still resonates in this era of “come as you are”? There have been feminist screeds written about the inequities at play in Shaw’s Pygmalion and its descendants (screeds which ignore Shaw’s original version where Eliza basically tells Henry to “shove it,” although she does of course end up with the equally absurd Freddie). She’s All That follows in a long tradition of ugly ducklings being reborn as beautiful swans, with of course the subtext that their inherent “swan-dom” was there all along, just waiting for the right Prince Charming to help it flourish. The strong independent women of today may be saying collectively, “No thanks, I’ll do it myself.”

She's All That Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

She's All That is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate/Miramax with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is an oddly inconsistent transfer that at times looks quite nicely sharp and detailed, and at other times sort of morphs itself (a la its heroine) into something else entirely, with a muddy, soft appearance, and some murky nighttime and dark sequences (notably the final dance segment). Color timing seems just slightly off, at least at times: notice Rachael Leigh Cook's oddly yellow flesh tones, especially in the early scenes of the film. Overall, though, this is a weirdly bifurcated transfer that ping pongs between a decently sharp and well detailed transfer, offering suitably robust color and an attractive, cinematic look, and a kind of mushy soft ambience where fine detail is lacking and colors don't quite pop the way they should. There does not appear to have been either over aggressive digital sharpening or noise reduction applied to this release.

She's All That Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

She's All That features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which gets off to a boisterous, source cue start and then rarely lets up afterward. Iscove populates the film with lots of pop and rock music, including Sixpence None the Richer (hey, they were huge in 1999), and that helps open the film up sonically beyond the typical romantic comedy strictures. There are a number of nicely immersive moments in the film, including a beach volleyball scene and the big dance number that caps the film (and which seems like a bizarre Glee routine based on West Side Story). Fidelity is excellent on the DTS track, with dialogue and the occasional effect well prioritized, but it's really in the film's appealing use of music that the soundtrack really comes fully to life.

She's All That Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Director Robert Iscove. This is a fitfully interesting commentary that is kind of laugh out loud funny when Iscove attempts to infuse deep, deep meaning into the film and its characters' motiviations, but is somewhat more captivating when he's simply giving production data like casting a bunch of people who would go on to greater fame and fortune. Interestingly, he barely comments about the notorious dance scene that caps the film, mentioning only that Adam Shankman (Hairspray) choreographed it and that he never would have done it had the film been a drama.
• Music Video (SD; 3:21) features Sixpence None the Richer performing "Kiss Me".
• Theatrical Trailer (SD; 2:14)

She's All That Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

She's All That probably will go down easiest for those who view it as a little time capsule, quaint and predictable, enjoyable in its own way, but ultimately no great shakes. The film is perhaps the most fun for giving us early career turns by a host of interesting people, including Anna Paquin as Prinze's sister, Dulé Hill as another buddy of Zack's, and Usher as the school's resident DJ (didn't your school have one of those?). The stars are uniformly fine, if not exceptional, but the film's screenplay never delivers hearty enough laughs or deep enough emotions to ever fully connect with the audience. If you have fond memories of She's All That from a decade or so ago, you'll probably enjoy it in this new high definition offering. For everyone else, start with the Howard-Hiller Pygmalion instead, and then work your way forward.