This article will contain spoilers for the movie “He’s All That”.
I wasn’t the right age to appreciate 1999’s “She’s All That” and its—questionable—take on teen romances. Now twenty-two years later and watching the gender-swapped remake “He’s All That”, I have even more problems with the makeover montage movies and what messages they provide to younger audiences.
“He’s All That”, recently landed on Netflix on Aug. 27, 2021, and at the time of writing this article is currently still sitting on Netflix’s Top Ten in the U.S. Today list.
I am not the target audience for this movie. I’ve never seen the original and I’m not on social media, something that features heavily in this movie. Despite that and my pessimistic attitude about romance movies, I watched “He’s All That” anyway. It made me angry and if I’m being honest, a tiny bit sad.
The movie starts with the main character, Padgett Sawyer, live-streaming her morning makeup routine from a perfect, pristine room that the viewer soon learns is in an average, everyday house, not the expensive condo she claims she lives in. After being picked up by her super-rich friends, who pretend not to know that she’s actually “poor”, Padgett convinces them to surprise her boyfriend with her. Her boyfriend is an up-and-coming hip-hop star, thanks to Padgett’s influence. However, despite all that she’s done for him, he’s cheating on her.
Understandably, she gets mad and even more understandably she starts to scream and freak out. Unfortunately, her “friend” is still live streaming. The movie goes downhill from here, in a bizarre series of events that loses and alienates the watchers.
Padgett is the pariah, losing nearly 20,000 followers because her boyfriend cheated on her. Padgett loses her sponsorship deal because she looked less than perfect with smeared mascara and a snotty nose after she found her boyfriend cheating on her. Somehow, even though we’re in the 21st century, Padgett is still the loser. The rest of the movie is equally confusing.
Relying heavily on the overdone tropes of makeovers and hate to love, the rest of the movie is a blur of Padgett picking a virtual unknown to makeover into prom king. The unknown in question, Cameron, is a bland stereotype of the angsty teenager who hates just about everything, wears beanies and long hair, and worst of all, doesn’t have a smartphone, he also takes photos solely on film and doesn’t let anybody see them.
Here’s the thing. This movie isn’t that bad, and I don’t think Addison Rae, a well-known influencer on TikTok, who plays Padgett deserves all of the hate. Yes, her acting is a bit cheesy, but the real problem with this movie isn’t her acting or the debate that TikTokers don’t deserve their opportunities. The main problem surrounding this movie is the fact that despite the movie trying to teach the message about “being yourself” it perpetuates the harmful stereotype that you have to be pretty and perfect and popular to be liked and valued.
Take Cameron for example, despite his long hair and slightly creepy mustache, he wasn’t bad-looking at all. Even Kourtney Kardashian’s character describes him as “a little scruffy, but cute”. The problem is that until he starts hanging out with Padgett and gets an admittedly well-deserved haircut, he’s nothing in the social scene of the school. His makeover and sudden appearance at parties with Padgett catapulted him to popularity and a prom king nomination. Nobody cared about him until he looked like everyone else and that’s what made me sad.
As a girl, I’ve lived my whole life with the societal pressure to look and act a certain way. I’m used to it. “He’s All That” does a great job of illustrating the pressure that is put on women as is seen in the way Padgett lost her followers for having a bad day. Yes, I’m incredibly annoyed that we’re still sending this message to girls, but it was equally saddening to see this move force the same pressure on men, particularly young men. Even Padgett’s monstrous ex wasn’t immune. Padgett herself describes how gross he was before she came into his life and changed everything from his name to his traditional greeting.
Of course, the movie tries to scramble and claim that because Cameron is suddenly hot and confident, it doesn’t matter that he was bullied and forced into it by a girl trying to maintain her own reputation. Once he realizes what Padgett has done to him, he’s rightfully mad at her but quickly forgives her once she tries to come clean about her own fake persona on social media.
There is no real consequence to her actions or any real discussion about the harmful stereotypes that Padgett and social media forced upon Cameron.
Padgett still wins prom queen, still gets the guy and regains all of her lost followers. Her lie to Cameron made her more popular as did her enforcing beauty standards on him as a sort of pawn, despite her new claim that she’s trying to be more authentic.
Movie remakes are frustrating for many reasons, but I found “He’s All That” more frustrating than most. I guess I’d hoped that in the twenty-plus years since the original came out that we’d be beyond starting relationships off with deception and the forced idea of needing to be pretty in order to be liked. I was wrong, clearly.
This movie deserves its bad review, but not because of the acting or the actors’ jobs, but because society needs to learn that teen rom coms can be made about something other than unrealistic beauty standards.
