She's the Man (2006)
Directed by Andy Fickman
Viola Hastings is in a real jam. Complications threaten her scheme to pose as her twin brother, Sebastian, and take his place at a new boarding school. She falls in love with her handsome roommate, Duke, who loves beautiful Olivia, who has fallen for Sebastian! As if that were not enough, Viola's twin returns from London ahead of schedule but has no idea that his sister has already replaced him on campus.
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13 films that influenced She's the Man
What critics say influenced She's the Man
From Katharine Hepburn's bizarre early disaster Sylvia Scarlett on, the concept of girls being boys never really seems to take onscreen.
One recalls the line from that "Tootsie" about how far a camera on a New York set should be pulled back so that Dustin Hoffman's Dorothy might look attractive; "how do you feel about Cleveland" came the reply.
Some Like It Hot, Tootsie and La Cage Aux Folles are but three triumphant comic examples of cinematic cross-dressing, but it's an undeniable fact that male-to-female gambits always seem to work better than female-to-male.
The cross-dressing antics can't compete with anything in "Tootsie," "Mrs.
I excitedly flocked to Tim Blake Nelson's O and Gil Junger's 10 Things I Hate About You , high school movies paying tribute to "Othello" and "The Taming of the Shrew", respectively.
And on its own, the movie makes as much sense as the deservedly forgotten, Menaechmi-induced Big Business , starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin.
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Julie Hagerty ("Airplane!") plays Viola's mom, a girly girl obsessed with all things debutante despite her jock daughter's nature and "Arrested Development's" David Cross is the overly friendly Principal Gold, a clueless social pyriah.
Among the supporting players, Emily Perkins ("Ginger Snaps") is notable for as the dorky girl, named Eunice of course, who blossoms.
Shaking up Shakespeare is hardly a new idea, and sometimes an unusual treatment of one of the Bard's works can turn out to be both enjoyable and insightful (such as Ian McKellen's transferring of "Richard III" to 1930s England, or Baz Luhrmann's robust "Romeo and Juliet").
Ten years after "Romeo + Juliet" started the trend of making over Shakespeare in today's teenage world ("10 Things I Hate About You" and "O" followed), teen sensation Amanda Bynes (TV's "What I Like About You") takes a crack at one of the Bard's gender bending roles with bland results.
A "Twelfth Night" for tweens, "She's the Man" sounds like promising fun: It's another Shakespearean update written by the duo who deftly turned "The Taming of the Shrew" into "10 Things I Hate About You."
Ten years after "Romeo + Juliet" started the trend of making over Shakespeare in today's teenage world ("10 Things I Hate About You" and "O" followed), teen sensation Amanda Bynes (TV's "What I Like About You") takes a crack at one of the Bard's gender bending roles with bland results.
Clueless was a cool makeover of Jane Austen's Emma, Cruel Intentions took on Choderlos de Laclos' eighteenth century novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and 10 Things I Hate About You set Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew in high schoool.
A breezy farce adapted from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" by first-time screenwriter Ewan Leslie and Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith ("10 Things I Hate About You" and "Legally Blonde"), "She's the Man" is so good-natured, and its cast seems to enjoy itself so thoroughly, that the total annihilation of disbelief it requires winds up feeling like a reasonable enough request.
Think O , "Get Over It" or "10 Things I Hate About You", the latter of which was written by "She's the Man" screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith.
Writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith helped pen this script -- this being the duo who wrote "10 Things I Hate About You," a movie filmed in Seattle and Tacoma and based on "The Taming of the Shrew."
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Some Like It Hot, Tootsie and La Cage Aux Folles are but three triumphant comic examples of cinematic cross-dressing, but it's an undeniable fact that male-to-female gambits always seem to work better than female-to-male.
Although her disguise -- a Beatles wig, a voice that sounds like Napoleon Dynamite on Novocain and some exaggerated macho posturing -- is even less convincing than Martin Lawrence's get-up in "Big Momma's House," it scarcely matters since most of her Illyria classmates look like they're well on their way out of their 20s.