He's All That review: at a point I started to feel like I'd had my drink spiked.
Let’s get this out of the way first: I adored this film.
I love art that has a sense of urgency and desperation, and everything about this film is desperate.
On paper, the concept makes a lot of sense. Take well-loved 90s teen film She’s All That, update it to the 2020s by folding in an ‘influencer’ plotline, and parachute in TikTok star Addison Rae to play the lead role. If I was a Hollywood producer, I would’ve signed off on it too!
But there’s a small flaw in the concept - a tiny crack, but it goes right to the film’s foundations, and the more you look at it the bigger it gets. It’s like this: Addison Rae is famous on TikTok for her dancing - and rightly so, she’s brilliant - but She’s All That is not a dance film.
It’s hard to overstate how much of an issue this is. Your star actress is colosally famous for doing one thing, and so you decide that your source material is a story with NONE OF THAT THING. Squaring that circle would be a challenge for even the most skilful screenwriters, and these aren’t them. Instead, they take the approach of inserting in a series of increasingly arbitrary and insane dance sequences with no justification or relevance to the plot, which only adds to the experience.
So the story: Addison Rae is an influencer-with-a-heart-of-gold who finds out her bf is cheating on her while streaming live to instagram. Like anyone would, she decides to get her revenge by making a bet to turn a random classmate into prom king.
Every rom com struggles to set up its contrived premise. There’s always at least one scene where you have to heroically suspend your disbelief and accept that, okay, Matthew McConaghey and Kate Hudson’s characters have ten days to chase the other away / make the other fall in love with them, sure, whatever. Grit your teeth and it’s over. But the scene in He’s All That where they lay out the plot premise is legitimately the worst I have ever seen.
‘Prom king… wait, that’s it! I’ll make a boy into prom king and THAT will prove that I’m good at makeovers!’ Rae’s rictus grin as she grimly pushes through the lines is a wonder to behold.
The subject of Rae’s makeover challenge is blandly handsome matinee idol Tanner Buchanan, whose character name I can’t remember, but whose incredible wig I will never forget.
The wig is the MVP in this film, I swear.
So Tanner’s character is a vaguely anti-authority punk who demonstrates his edgy bona fides by wearing a New York Dolls t-shirt, a GG Allin t-shirt, and a Stooges t-shirt (but not just any Stooges t-shirt - a t-shirt for the Stooges’ 2007 comeback album, generally considered a craven attempt to remake their classic work for money - nice cheeky reference, costume department). He’s also a street photographer and volunteers with horses since his mother died in a plane crash, which is A Lot Of Character Traits and potentially at least three more than Tanner can pull off.
One classic scriptwriting truism is that the film’s true protagonist is the one who changes the most over the course of the story. Unintentionally, that makes He’s All That Tanner Buchanan’s story - which is a problem, because no-one knows or cares who Tanner Buchanan is, especially once he loses the wig.
This also reduces Addison Rae to being a spectator in her own leading role. This would be a challenge for any actor, and again, Addison Rae is a kickass dancer and influencer, NOT AN ACTOR. She digs deep, but she has basically two facial expressions to choose between: SMILE and FROWN (both with a glint of panic in her eyes).
So once Addison commits to turning Tanner into prom king, the already shaky plot goes fully off the rails and into a nearby ditch. The story lurches from one setpiece to another, none of which make any sense except as opportunities to get Addison into a variety of themed costumes.
The result is that the characters seem as confused as any of us about where they are and why they’re there - they stumble around various parties and events like they’ve just had their drinks spiked - at a point I started to feel like I’d had my drink spiked.
They go to a 1920s-themed party. They go to a train station. They wash cars in their underwear. None of it makes any sense. Is it all just one party? Who are these people? Why are these teen boys topless all the time? Why won’t they stop smiling?
Kourtney Kardashian shows up on an exercise bike for a celebrity cameo so crushingly badly acted that you hope the film got a discount on her fee. Tho tbh it’s impressive in its own way watching her leadenly read her lines off an autocue while clearly not having read the script.
The absolute highlight is the scene where the characters are… somewhere, at one of the unending series of beach parties, and Addison Rae abruptly starts kareokeing Teenage Dream in a bikini.
I’m not a massive Katy Perry fan, but hearing Rae’s weirdly flat vocals way too high in the mix is a reminder that Perry actually has an amazing voice. Anyway, the scene is weird and insane already, but then Rae starts faltering, and Tanner suddenly jumps up and starts dueting with her, and the crowd of extras flex their abs and flash their teeth, and not one single person in this scene knows what they’re doing here or where they’re going, and nothing feels real except the vague sense of horror coming off the cast in waves that this whole thing is a disaster.
Near the end, as I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn, Tanner discovers that his relationship with Rae was actually a bet. He stalks off, and Addison mourns. ‘I’ve lost everything - my college fund, my sponsorship… and Cameron.’ Faced with this crisis, she has no choice but to… go to the prom and compete in a dance competition we haven’t heard about until now?
Did the writers just all quit at this point? Did they just splice this scene in from a different film? WHAT IS GOING ON?
Finally Tanner Buchanan gallops up on a horse, because the theme of the prom is Under The Sea. There’s a brief moment where you think he might be coming to trample her to death with the horse, but instead the two of them make out, and and at last get to the reason we all came here tonight, which is the TECHNO REMIX OF SIXPENCE NONE THE RICHER’S KISS ME
It could do with a bit of dubstep wobble to make it even more excruciating, but otherwise: perfect. Like this film: perfect.
Submitted September 04, 2021 at 01:56PM by blind___ https://ift.tt/3jFPBd0
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