Movie Info

RATING:

PG-13 for some sexual material.

RELEASE:

Mar. 17, 2006

GENRE:

Comedy

STARRING:

Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Robert Hoffman (III), Alex Breckenridge, David Cross

DIRECTOR:

Andy Fickman

DISTRIBUTOR:

DreamWorks Pictures

 

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MOVIE REVIEW

She's the Man

By Dr. Ted Baehr
Publisher, Movieguide Magazine

What's This?

CBN.com - She's the Man is an over-the-top adaptation of William Shakespeare's Twelth Night.

Viola Hastings, played by Amanda Bynes, disguises herself as her twin brother Sebastian so she can play on the boys’ soccer team at his new boarding school, while he goes off to London for two weeks to make his name in music industry. Viola's effeminate hairdresser friend teaches her how to be a man. Clueless, her loony, old-fashioned mother wants her to be a debutante.

Viola rooms with this school hunk, Duke, who only has eyes for the prettiest girl in school, Olivia, who in turn falls for Viola's Sebastian because, of course, Sebastian understands women and is sensitive to how crude and thoughtless men can really be.

Duke teaches Viola how to be a better soccer star in return for her promise on how to get Olivia to fall in love with him. Olivia falls for Sebastian, while Duke falls for Viola when he gets to kiss her in the county fair kissing booth while she is posing as herself. In the meantime, the black soccer player falls for the ugly duckling science student, the balding headmaster is absolutely loony, the parents are out of touch, and the plot thickens and thickens until the real Sebastian and the cross-dressing Viola have to bare their private parts to straighten out the plot.

There are a lot of funny moments in She's the Man. There's also a lot of embarrassing, campy moments, and there are other moments that go beyond camp and are completely over the top. Some of this movie is a complete embarrassment to watch. Most of it just hangs together. The first-time director's last movie was Reefer Madness, not a terrific credit for someone who wants to direct actors as weak as those in this movie. The movie's caricatures are too broad, and the lead actress does not look the part when she disguises herself as a teenage boy.

Most of the messages in She's the Man are absolutely abhorrent. Rather than the clarity of Shakespeare's vision, this story completely confuses gender issues. Of course, if we were technically accurate, gender refers to language, and the issues confused by the movie refer to male and female sex. Often, the confusion is only to have a vehicle for salacious sexual comments. There is a scene, for example, when Viola gets accosted crudely by four babes, one after another.

There's also heavy kissing and petting in She's the Man, and the moral of the story is that anything goes, although there are a few, very mild moral caveats stated at the end. The final problem with She's the Man is that many of the teenagers enjoyed it, which is not a good sign at all.

Address Comments To:
David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg
DreamWorks SKG
1000 Flower Street
Glendale, CA 91201
Phone: (818) 695-5000
Website: www.dreamworks.com

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