"It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date." -- George Bernard Shaw.
It would be fascinating to know what George Bernard Shaw might say about She's All That. Since Shaw was keen on the young keeping the old on their toes, he might not mind what screenwriter R. Lee Fleming Jr. and director Robert Iscove did to Pygmalion in their 1999 reworking of the story. On the other hand, Shaw also wrote, "We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." It could be argued that not a whole lot of 'producing' went into She's All That, which is essentially just a re-hashing of Shaw's nearly 90-year-old play.
If you know Pygmalion, you know the basic story line of She's All That. A cool guy enters into a bet that he can turn the plainest of young women into a star. The cool guy is class president Zach Siler (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) and the plain young woman is geeky Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook). Zach sets out to win the trust of Laney and then transform her into a prom queen. Laney, of course, doesn't know there's a bet, and conflict ensues when she finds out.
Prinze and Cook are an appealing pair in the two lead roles. Their charisma goes a long way toward making this otherwise predictable film a success. Their efforts are supported by capable supporting performances, including Kieran Culkin as Laney's brother, Eldin Ratliff as Laney's geek friend and Anna Paquin as Zach's sister. Fleming and Iscove show enough restraint to minimise bathroom humour and general childish stupidity, giving the basic conflict between 'winner guy' and 'loser girl' a chance to work itself out.
She's All That asks us to accept the ridiculous premise that the beautiful Laney could hide her good looks simply by wearing glasses and keeping her hair up. But the biggest problem is that Pygmalion comes from a time when it was acceptable for a man to essentially own a woman and have the power to transform her or not. When the same concept is rehashed in She's All That, the affront to women is painfully obvious. Sadly, it seems that young audiences at the turn of the millennium are as prepared to accept this as were folks in Shaw's day.
