Johanna Ericson
Reporter
“He’s All That” is a Netflix original movie that is a spiritual successor to the 90s film “She’s All That.” It follows the story of Padgett Sawyer (Addison Rae), a teenage girl who makes a bet with her friends to see if she can take any guy in their high school considered a lost cause, give him a makeover, and make him prom king. A plot very similar to its predecessor.
As much as I wanted to enjoy this movie, I wish I had two extra hands so that I could give it four thumbs down. About 10 minutes into this movie, it became the equivalent of some jerk popping their gum as loud as they possibly can next to you. The biggest problem I had with this film is that every single little thing revolved around TikTok and other forms of social media. For example, the beginning of the movie showed the main character demonstrating a live skin-care tutorial for her followers. Of course, that is the world we live in now, but it seems that those things were just unnecessarily shoved in your face at any given opportunity. Also, toward the very end when everyone is at prom, they have this dance battle that consists of TikTok dances.
In the cast’s performance, Addison Rae’s acting was extremely subpar. It’s almost as though she was playing herself. To give more context, Addison Rae is a TikTok star in real life. Her character, Padgett, is an influencer in the film as well and has a large TikTok following. Not to mention, Kourtney Kardashian plays her boss, Jessica. This felt extremely unnecessary, and it was almost as though she was put in the movie just to advertise it. Along with the mindless plot and characters, the innuendos in the movie were terrible. It almost seemed like a 13-year-old wrote the film.
The only two things I personally enjoyed about this movie was how they included the LGBT community by making Nisha (Annie Jacobs) and Quinn (Myra Molloy) a couple. They also kept the iconic line “I was a f******* bet?” from the original movie.
Overall, this move could have been so great. Unfortunately, the acting was bad, nothing felt genuine, and, as mentioned earlier, everything about TikTok was just shoved down your throat.