SHE'S ALL THAT (48)

Directed by: Robert Iscove

Starring: Freddie Prinze Jr., Rachael Leigh Cook, Matthew Lillard

The Pitch: Zack, the most popular guy at an LA high-school, makes a bet that he can turn any girl in school into a prom queen.

Theo Sez: A new kind of teen movie - one that doesn't give a damn about its basic plot, and trusts its target audience not to care. You'd expect the premise to be set up in some way - Zack makes his boast in front of his ex-girlfriend, say, and would be humiliated if he didn't follow up on it - but in fact the set-up is incredibly casual, giving the impression he could just as easily have laughed off the wager as accepted it ; even more bizarrely, once the faux courtship begins he gives no indication of awkwardness or insincerity, though there's no soul-searching about lying to the woman he loves either - you don't actually feel that he's smitten particularly, more that he's just too nice for any COMPANY OF MEN-style cruelty or (even) ambivalence. The film protects its central couple, doesn't allow them to be obnoxious or unattractive (even when they're meant to be), deliberately creating an inoffensive vacuum which it can then surround with smart, often funny bits of business - jokes, minor characters, bits of teen lingo (a character is described as liable to "shit frisbees"), an impromptu rap session, a big dance number to the strains of the ubiquitous "Rockafeller Skank", Lillard hamming it up as an MTV himbo, a teen bringing an inflatable doll as his prom date, a customer at the Middle Eastern fast-food place where Laney works asking her to "super-size my (falafel) balls". It all makes for diverting feelgood fun, but you wish it would at least try for tension - one would almost have preferred the dorky earnestness of a John Hughes flick to this kind of deliberate hollowness. Film-makers seem to have decided that today's teen audience are too knowing and media-literate to take a familiar plot seriously, and teens seem happy (even flattered) to take them at their word ; everybody's loss, really. Good to see soccer making some slight inroads into American culture, though : maybe there's something to this new generation after all...