Rewinding The 80s

Some of my favorite 80s teen movies. 

The only Sean Penn movie I've ever seen.

He's All That

tags: Netflix streaming, teen romance

91 minutes

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He's All That is a teen romantic comedy movie which is a gender-swapped remake of the 1999 movie She's All That. Rachael Leigh Cook who starred in the original movie plays the mother of the main character, Padgett Sawyer, a high schooler.

Padgett earns lots of money with her status as a popular social media influencer. She is able to save money for college and helps her mom with household expenses. She gets humiliated on live video finding her boyfriend with another girl, losing many followers and beauty product endorsement earnings. She vows to get her influencer status back mainly for her college funds and makes a bet with her friends that she will makeover an unsuspecting boy in school because she is the so-called queen of makeovers. The 3 girls choose a loner boy who doesn't follow the trend in school. He has only 2 friends, his younger sister and a girl who is of Indian descent. The boy, Cameron, is not ugly, he is just not stylish and is a magnet to taunting by schoolmates because he doesn't socialize with them. Cameron is an amateur photographer who never shows his photos to anyone, works as a stable hand in the morning before going to school. He loves Kurosawa films which is a huge plus in my book.  

I was not interested to see it at first but then I read the nasty comments about the main actress's lack of acting chops and experience because in real life she got famous for being a social media darling. These people, I find, are just jealous. IMHO the movie is better, yes, better than the original. The script as expected is clichéd but acting is good. I liked it.

Don't listen to the negative comments and watch this updated remake with the same theme as Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, etc.