The students at Zack Siler’s high school all know where he sits in the school’s pecking order. He’s right there at the top of the roost beside his similarly stunning girlfriend, Taylor Vaughn.
That beautiful couple is universally recognized as not only the expected king and queen of the upcoming senior prom, but the school’s only true royalty.
However, just as Zack is coming back from spring break and beginning to think about his fast-approaching transition to college, he’s shocked to find that his popularity perch has been violently shaken. The school is abuzz because Taylor came back from her trip to Florida to report that she had a spring break fling with none other than Brock Hudson. That’s right, the Brock Hudson from MTV’s latest season of Real World.
Taylor has upped her game to having sex with a “personality” now. And when she walks up to break the news to Zack, she isn’t kind with her break-up notice.
“Did you really think I was gonna leave for college and still be dating you?” Taylor smugly asks the rather shocked Zack. “Oh, you did? That’s so sweet.” Then she sashays confidently away wearing her new popularity status like an exotic scent.
Zack’s best friend, Dean, can definitely smell something—maybe it was blood in the water—because he immediately starts riding his bud about how badly that all went and how bad Zack now looks in the eyes of the school.
Zack, however, isn’t one to get kicked and just lay there. He instantly puffs his chest and announces that he doesn’t have the slightest need for Taylor. Why, he could take any girl in the school—fat, skinny, buck-toothed or cross-eyed—and turn her into prom-queen material.
Before you can say, Oh, I’ve got you now!, Dean has transformed Zack’s bravado into a bet and pointed out the perfect candidate: Laney Boggs.
Once more, Zack is left with his mouth hanging open. Laney Boggs is likely the least popular nerd girl in school, between her dark and dreary artwork, her constantly paint-spattered wardrobe and her off-putting social awareness myopia.
A beat later, however, Zack is back in gear. He’s got weeks till prom. He can do this. A little fashion overhaul, a horse brush or two, and he’ll polish this lump of granite into a gemstone.
After all, he is Zack Siler!
As we (and Zack) get to know Laney, we come to realize that this ostracized teen is very bright, a young woman with her head solidly attached to her shoulders. In fact, not only isn’t she initially charmed by Zack’s advances, she rebuffs him. She couldn’t care less about his good looks and popularity.
With time, however, the pair not only becomes friends, but they start to see the hidden good sides they both tend to conceal. Zack (and his younger sister, Mackensie) do help Laney look prettier and become more popular, but that’s not what Zack comes to appreciate about her. He is drawn to her honesty, kindness and sensitivity. And Zack eventually grows in exhibiting these traits, too (after the truth of the bet is revealed).
Zack is also hesitant to make a choice about college because of the pressure his dad is applying to him. During an argument, his father says, “Blaming me isn’t going to change the fact that the future is going to happen, whether you are ready for it or not.”
That statement illustrates a good portion of what this film is attempting to communicate. The filmmakers also suggest that the quality of your character is far more important than your good looks and popularity.
None.
Early on, Dean talks about Taylor’s sex appeal, saying crudely, “Every girl wants to be her, and every guy wants to nail her.” And that statement represents (in nicer terms) this movie’s ongoing worldview about teen sex. Guys here (particularly the aggressively macho Dean) tend to ogle and eye the young women around them, and talk about their body parts. Male body parts become a winkingly crude part of the joking, too.
The crude giggles range from sexual gags about high school sexuality to quips about prostitution and bestiality.
Taylor relishes the attention lavished upon her, and she depends on it to get what she wants as she walks around in very form-fitting clothes. When talking about becoming prom queen, she refers to her body and says, “OK, I could win this thing in fluorescent lighting, on the first day of my period, cloaked in T.J. Maxx.”
We see Taylor and most of the other girls in this film in bikinis. (Laney wears a one piece suit that reveals a bit of cleavage.) After Taylor reports that she and Brock spent three days in bed, we’re shown a clip of pair rolling around on a bed in their underwear and later lying together in bed while she kisses and licks his bare chest. Taylor and Brock also make out aggressively in public, while he grabs her backside.
Laney later wears some formfitting dresses that sport a little cleavage.
Zack and Dean and several other guys hit the beach and display their muscular physiques. Zack goes to his graduation in the nude. We see him from the front in his graduation cap while holding a soccer ball over his crotch. (He then tosses the ball while off screen and we see other students’ reactions.)
During a live art performance, a guy steps out on stage dressed only in white briefs. During the voting for prom king and queen, a number of school groups campaign, including the gay students group.
Two teens bully Laney and suggest that she commit suicide in order to imbue her dark and depressing artwork with more significance. A couple of male bullies also shove Laney’s young brother, Simon, causing him to tumble and fall.
We later learn that Laney and Simon’s mom died of cancer.
There’s one f-word and a half-dozen s-words in the dialogue, along with scattered uses of “h—,” “a–hole,” “b–ch” and “d–n.”
God’s name is misused six times (once in combination with “d–n”).
Teens drink in a bar on spring break as well as at a house party with bottles of beer and cups of some other alcoholic beverage. Laney’s brother concocts a drink for Zack, mixing in pours from several of his dad’s bottles of hard liquor We also see Taylor waiting at home for someone with two margaritas at the ready. Dean swills booze from a personal flask.
Several teens smoke at a party, included Dean and an inebriated Taylor. Then Taylor pours her drink down the front of Laney’s dress.
Parental figures here tend to be a bit bumbling and disconnected from their kids. But at least they try (when they’re not being totally thick-headed). A guy tries to shame someone by saying he would be just like his mom if he had a “fifth of Chivas and a uterus.”
There’s a pointless gross-out scene at school wherein a bully is forced to consume his own public hair. A girl is drunk and vomiting at a party before she passes out.
As teen romcoms go, She’s All That made a pretty big splash back in 1999. It raked in more than $100 million dollars worldwide at the box office against a production budget of around $10 million or so. The movie featured young, buzz-worthy actors. And it promoted a cutting-edge commentary about teen culture and the worldview of the day (for better or worse).
Probably its strongest statement, however, was that ‘90s high schoolers should stop worrying about social expectations to look or act a certain way and start worrying about the kind of person they want to become. That’s a solid message for today’s teens as well.
However, 25 years sure does make a difference, and viewers will likely watch this “classic” through several different lenses.
Today’s youth may see it as an oddity that gives them a semi-goofy snapshot of what high school must have been like back in those pre-social media, pre-smartphone, prehistoric days.
Adult fans, looking back through their rose-colored lens of memory, however, will probably be surprised that this pic is so much less than they remember it being. Former teens who are now parents themselves may not so readily cheer this story’s sarcastic shots at parenthood; its preoccupation with high school sex and prom flings (that are all “crepe paper, cleavage and Cristal”); and its nasty jokes that crudely reduce teen girls to a collection of jiggling body parts.
From a 2024 perspective, it really is difficult to tell if this Pygmalion-like tale is challenging the objectification of women … or kind of exploiting it.
For those who’ve never seen this late 20th-century “classic” before (but who might be discovering it after its October 2024 Netflix release), they’ll likely note the movie’s very ‘90s vibe. They’ll also discover a pic that has its plusses but often comes off feeling pretty coarse, too.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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