You didn’t honestly think that “He’s All That,” Netflix’s new remake of the 1999 classic “She’s All That,” was going to be critically celebrated, did you? Oh, you did? That’s so sweet! In truth, the film has been anything but a critical darling, instead garnering a slew of harsh reviews across the interwebs. Sonia Rao of The Washington Post bluntly espoused, “In the end, ‘He’s All That’ is not all that – not even a little bit of that” and Australia’s News.com awarded it a scant one out of five rating with the remark, “The one star is for Matthew Lillard’s cameo.” Even viewers are coming down hard on the flick, granting it a pitiful 28% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes
Despite the countless naysayers, though, “He’s All That,” which debuted this past Friday, quickly hit Number One on Netflix and held onto the coveted spot throughout the weekend, proving that nostalgia is quite a powerful draw – as is TikTok (leading lady Addison Rae is a social media sensation with a mind-blowing 83.5 million followers on the platform).
Both “He’s All That” and its predecessor were penned by screenwriter R. Lee Fleming Jr. But while the OG film saw “class president, standout athlete, all-around badass mamba-jahamba” Zack Siler (Freddie Prinze Jr.) transform “scary and inaccessible” artist Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook) into a prom queen nominee, the gender-bending remake couples influencer Padgett Sawyer (Rae) with loner Cameron Kweller (Tanner Buchanan), with the former attempting to makeover the latter into a prom king.
Along with flipping gender roles, the film swaps locations, as well. The original movie cast Torrance High (of “Beverly Hills, 90210” fame) as the fictional William Henry Harrison High School (home of The Earthquakes!). The remake, on the other hand, takes place at Cali High (also home of The Earthquakes!), which in actuality is Palisades Charter High School in Pacific Palisades (another oft-filmed locale from such teen fare as “Carrie,” “The Glass House” and “Freaky Friday”). And while Laney lived in a split-level Redondo Beach ranch-style pad in the 1999 flick, Cameron, his sister, Brin (Isabella Crovetti), and Tom Selleck-loving Grandma (Jill Basey) call a South Pasadena Craftsman home in “He’s All That.”
