She’s all that

Year of release : 1999

Run time : 1h36m

Genre : Teen / Romance

Cast : Freddie Prinze Jr, Rachael Leigh Cook, Paul Walker, Anna Paquin, Matthew Lillard, Jodi Lyn O’Keffe, Gabrielle Union, Kieran Culkin, Clea DuVall, Kevin Pollack, Lil’ Kim, Usher

Zack is the popular student at his high school in California. He is attractive, has good grades, and received acceptance letters from all the colleges he applied to. On the first day back, after Spring Break, he is asking about his girlfriend, Taylor, the most popular girl in school, that no one seems to know anything about.

When Taylor arrives, she breaks up with Zack, because she met a reality star, Brock Hudson. Hurt, Zack tells his friends he can take any ugly ,random girl and beautify her, turning her into the prom queen, in 6 weeks. His frenemy, Dean, makes a bet with him, and chooses Laney for him to turn into the next prom queen.

Laney is a student who is not popular, actually she is bullied by two girls, her biggest bully being Taylor. Laney doesn’t have such good grades as Zack, and has a terrible sense of style. Her mother died when she was younger, and she works at a restaurant every day after school .

Zack approaches her right away, but Laney walks away.

Talking to his sister, she tells him to find out what Laney likes and where she hangs out.

Taylor is the queen b1tch, who even annoys her friends as she only cares about her reality star boyfriend and herself.

Zack goes to the restaurant Laney works at, and asks her out. She doesn’t want anything to do with him, but her best friend convinces her to give him a chance. He offers Zack his ticket to Laney’s theatre play.

Zack goes (the show was horrible, by the way), and she puts him on the spot for some reason, as if the play was interactive. So Zack has to go on stage and perform on the spot. He comes up with a ridiculous bit everyone loves.

Trying to take her home, she makes a scene when he complements her, and leaves him in the middle of the street.

Zack is still trying to win Laney over, so he goes to her place, inviting her to the beach, but she refuses, so he asks her brother to play a game with him, making Laney accept the beach invitation hearing he’ll be at their place all day.

Telling his friends about going to the beach, they all join them.

In the evening one of Zack’s friends invites them to his party. Laney refuses saying she needs to clean the house, so Zack brings the whole soccer team to clean her house (I don’t know what time line this was, as it seemed it was already around 5 in the afternoon, as the sun was close to setting). He also brings his sister to beautify her, so she plucks her eyebrows, cuts her hair short, and makes her wear contacts.

When she comes downstairs, Zack seems impressed.

At the party, Taylor sees her, and pours her drink into her cleavage. Although Zack was there, and saw everything, he didn’t help Laney. He does take her home.

The next day, the whole school is roaring about Laney running for prom school queen, against Taylor. Nobody knows who nominated her.

The school seems to be divided between all the unpopular students who vote for Laney, and Taylor’s fans. Laney doesn’t do anything to try to win, while Taylor, who’s calling herself a legacy prom queen, for all the women in her family were prom queens, is offering gifts to the students so they’ll vote for her.

Taylor’s relationship with Brock doesn’t go that well, as the man is self absorbed and narcissistic (just like her,but times 10). In the end, he breaks up with her. To save face, Taylor wants to get back together with Zack, but he’s not interested.

The movie honestly bored me. I don’t know what it was, but I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like Laney, and to be honest the character is not presented to the audience more than the rest, it feels we don’t know much about her, and I didn’t care for her.

I didn’t like Laney’s art, or theatre play. I think it was modern art and both of them were atrocious.

I guess it was character growth with Zack, but he didn’t seem mean to begin with.

Taylor was mean. Their other friends seemed normal, one of them seemed to not really like Taylor because of her antics.

I liked how they made the passing from scene to scene, when Taylor told Zack about how she met Brock in Florida,and how they walked through her memories.

The acting was good.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was dating Freddie Prinze Jr at the time, makes a cameo appearance, as the girl who gives Laney’s brother the plate without talking to him, when he asks who wants pepper.

The soundtrack was Ok, I didn’t find it all that, quoting the movie’s title.

When it comes to the visual effects, I think it’s what I already wrote about, the passing in that scene at the beginning of the movie.

The movie received positive reviews on platforms like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDB.

The movie grossed a little over 103 million dollars at the box office, against a production budget of around 10 million dollars.

You can watch the full movie for free on the Ok.Ru platform.

Rating : Could have been a contender !