Hello! I will preface this post by saying that it is my absolute first time reviewing.. anything at all on my profile. Not to mention movies, which I am not knowledgeable at all about - hence "Dilletante's Review". That said, I have some opinions that I want to share and the first(and maybe last?) movie I will talk about is "He's All That". To spoil the conclusion of the post a bit - it was a movie we watched while falling asleep on Valentine's Day with my girlfriend. Obviously, as usual with this kind of movies, we had no expectations. Somehow, this one still managed to disappoint.
Synopsis
still image from the movie
The movie's plot is.. Well, similar to every light teenage romance movie. The main character of the show is Padgett Sawyer, played by Addison Rae - a Tiktok influencer. I will talk a bit about the acting later on in the post. She (Padgett) is an instagram influencer that comes from a rather average house, but acts as if she was rich. This is by the way something I did not realize for a while, which means that either the movie is extremely bad at explaining stuff, or I was just too uninterested to pay enough attention.
She gets in an unwanted situation, which then gets filmed and put online - leading to a completely exaggerated fall in her followers, as well as her losing some sponsorships crucial for her college money. Because of this, she needs to do something big in order to regain the following, as well as the income stream she's just lost. Because she considers herself the "makeover queen", she decides to change the biggest loser she can find - who turns out to be Cameron Kweller, played by Tanner Buchanan - and turn him into "the Prom King".
The entirety of the rest of the movie is just showing her journey to do so - getting to know him, realizing there's more to him than just being an arrogant and eccentric outcast, blah blah blah. It all culminates on the Prom night.
General Opinion
I will try not to spoil too much, but there are just so many things I would love to rant about in this post. He's All That is extremely predictable, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Sometimes it can be enjoyable to turn off thinking and enjoy a not-so-good movie, an example of which for me would be Royal Treatment. This one is nothing like it.
The predicatbility of this movie is not its flaw - there are way too many of those though. I believe my biggest problem while watching this movie was getting over the dialogues. I am still a young guy, my teens aren't a complete blur to me and these dialogues just feel exaggerated. That isn't the only thing. They are also quite cringe in any moments and whenever they're supposed to mean something.. They just don't. One example is Padgett's conversations with Cameron. They are supposed to have chemistry between each other and the dialogues just.. feel stiff. I don't feel like they like each other, even though it's meant to be the focus of the movie.
The exaggerations of many characters are another thing, because while they might be satirical (I wouldn't claim to sit in authors' heads), they are not funny. Instead, they are simply annoying. Many of them have no significance to the story and are added for some stereotypical comedic effects, which don't end up working out at all. Examples of that are both non-Cameron candidates for becoming Prom King: Jordan and Sebastian. Jordan is a whole different story, because he's meant to be important - as Padgett's ex-boyfriend. Is he? Well, he has some over-the-top dumb lines and that's pretty much it.
The prom is the final rant I will go on. Becoming Prom Queen and King is apparently a life and death situation. I have no idea in what world that is the case and why people are going absolutely crazy for it, but it makes a bad movie even worse. The candidates have supporting groups, we even get to hear a song taken straight out of a bad musical.. Get me out already.
Actors
This will be extremely short, just because I know nothing about acting and don't want to talk out of my arse. I do not know if it's because the actors aren't bad or the movie is just so bad that everything seems fine in comparison, but I actually did not mind the performances. There was a lot of scepticism about Addison Rae, but she did alright. Tanner Buchanan was really pleasant to watch and I think was my favourite performance.
As for the rest, I don't think the actors had much to work with - if you're given bad lines and a bland character, you'd really have to be a great actor to make it seem good.
Closing Words
This was not a good movie. I know I was very negative in the review, but I am not one to wrap poop in a candy wrapper and say it's chocolate. It just was not good. I feel a little bad for the actors, because they were alright to watch and now this will forever be in their filmography.
I am easy with movies. I am not a big fan of them, I do not have much knowledge, but I rarely dislike what I see. Hell, I even mentioned that I found The Royal Treatment to be quite enjoyable in its predictability and simplicity. Yet somehow, He's All That does not want to escape my head as one of the worst movies I've seen.
