He's All That

Well, I'm relieved. The announcement of a gender-switched version of 1999's "She's All That" from its original screenwriter (R. Lee Fleming Jr.) had me worried it would just replicate the worst elements of the original story of a popular high school boy making a bet that he can turn a dorky art student into a teenage dream girl. I'm still trying to forget the pizza scene and I know texting was not a thing back then, but the racing around at the big dance climax was annoyingly contrived. I also feared the remake might get all cutesy and meta, overdoing the references to the original in hopes we would not notice the lack of originality. Also, there was already was a gender-switched version back in 1999 called "Drive Me Crazy." It was hard to imagine there was anything more to add to a story that was itself a re-tread of "My Fair Lady," which was a re-tread of "Pygmalion." That's a lot of re-treading.

I'm happy to report that "He's All That" avoids these pitfalls. It is a sweet little end of summer sorbet with appealing young performers and a script that refreshes the original without overdoing it. There are a few nods to "She's All That," starting with Rachel Leigh Cook, the "She" of the 1999 film, as the mother of the main character, a popular high school senior and social media influencer named Padgett Sawyer (Addison Rae). Matthew Lillard, from the cast of the original, shows up, too. And the film's best-remembered song, "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, comes at just the right moment. Updates like a more inclusive storyline and the stress of social media are understated but meaningful.

The first thing we see is Padgett's pink and pretty bedroom, set up to display the pink and pretty persona she has created for social media. Padgett has almost 900,000 followers who love every detail of her life, especially her gift for makeovers and her romance with Jordan Van Draanen (Peyton Meyer), a classmate who is an up and coming musical performer. Her posts have earned her a cosmetics company sponsor so generous she is able to save for college and help her single mother, a nurse, with the household bills. 

Her discovery that Jordan has been unfaithful is broadcast live, like just about every other moment of her life, and her meltdown is the kind of messy reality influencers are not allowed to have. She loses followers, and then her sponsor (Kourtney Kardashian, who is way out of her depth when it comes to saying words).  

Padgett is desperate to erase the images of herself being authentic and reclaim her popularity. Her friend Alden (Madison Pettis, a long way from playing Dwayne Johnson's daughter in "The Game Plan") proposes a bet with some extreme stakes and Padgett rashly agrees. She says she can take the school dork and get him elected Prom King. That would be Cameron (Tanner Buchanan), scruffy and cynical.