Posted: 03/22/2006

She’s the Man

(2006)

by Anna Keizer

I’m a sucker for teen flicks. Having been a child of the eighties, I was reared on the likes of Sixteen Candles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Better Off Dead. Molly Ringwald is like my best friend from grade school. Anthony Michael Hall, John Cusack and Judd Nelson are the guys I grew up with. John Hughes is that cool uncle that every kid wants to have in her family. And because I truly believe that the 1980s were to Cheesy American Teen Flicks what the 1940s were to Italian Neo-Realism or the late ’50s and early ’60s were to the French New Wave, I consider myself a bit of an expert on the genre. Happily, She’s the Man doesn’t disappoint.

A loose update of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the film is set (of course) in a modern-day high school setting. Our heroine, Viola (Amanda Bynes), is the star of the girls’ soccer team at Cornwall. Just two weeks before the new season begins, however, the team is unexpectedly cut. Indignant and refusing to quit her passion, she decides to stand-in for her twin brother, Sebastian (James Kirk), at his new school, Illyria, since he’s ditching for the next few weeks to tour London. Yet having made the transition from Viola to Sebastian appearance-wise, our girl quickly learns that living the life of a boy is more difficult than she thought. Showers at four o’clock in the morning to avoid gender indiscretions. Explaining to her dorm mates why she would have tampons hiding in her shoes (they make great nose-bleed stoppers). Trying to avoid her brother’s ex-girlfriend, Monique (Alex Breckenridge), from getting too close and compromising her secret identity. And then there’s Duke (Channing Tatum), her roommate, star of Illyria’s soccer team and her new crush. Still with me?

I’ll admit, ten minutes into this movie, I was somewhat cringing. It’s hard for me to not compare any of the newbie teen flicks to my classics. And this one didn’t seem worthy. The acting started out incredibly superficial and stiff. Even by teen flick standards. Then - I don’t know. Once the action moved to Illyria, the movie really started to gain momentum. For this, I give huge props to Bynes. She contains a kind of Lucille Ball-esque silliness that endears you to her. Of course, she is so obviously a girl, even under a bad Beatles wig and sideburns, that if she didn’t carry out the role with a great deal of self-deprecating humor and fearlessness to look ridiculous, the film would completely fall flat. On the contrary, she entirely throws herself into both characters with a kind of bonsai madness that actually makes it work.

Okay, because it is a teen flick, let’s be honest and admit that this film is also completely predictable. We all know what’s gonna happen. Viola, er, Sebastian, will go through a rough patch where he, or she, will think (1) that she won’t get to play against Cornwall to exact revenge for being cut in the first place and (2) that she won’t get her boy Duke in the end. But we all know that, yup, she’ll get both. Come on, it’s a teen flick. Not The Bicycle Thief. The only thing that any reasonable movie-goer could hope to ask from a film like this is some laughs, a smile and perhaps a, “That was so cute!” I, for one, did all three. So, although She’s the Man won’t ever knock off my ’80s favorites from the top spots on my list of The Greatest Teen Flicks Ever, it does have a place on it, a notch below Just One of the Guys, since they’re basically the same movie. And from here on out, Amanda Bynes is like Molly Ringwald’s fun little sister. Or Anthony Michael Hall’s cool niece. Or maybe John Hughes’ silly daughter. You get the point.

Anna Keizer is a film critic and screenwriter living in Los Angeles.

Got a problem? E-mail us at filmmonthly@gmail.com