Josie Harshfield
Video Story Editor
The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.
On August 25th 2021, the movie “He’s All That” was released starring the Tiktok star, Addison Rae. Many other well known celebrities such as Tanner Buchanan and Peyton Meyer. The movie is a gender-swapped remake of the 1999 movie “She’s All That” starring Rachael Leigh Cook and Matthew Lilliard. Addison Rae plays Padgett Sawyer, a high school fashion influencer who has a breakdown on a live stream video after finding out her boyfriend cheated on her. She decides to rebuild her confidence, and she and her friends make a bet that she can befriend an outcast that goes by the name Cameron Keller (Tanner Buchanan). She changes his looks to make him prom king material, and naturally she falls in love with him.
There are various different and interesting opinions on the film from Bradley students. On IMDb the movie has a 4.4/10 rating, and on Rotten Tomatoes it has a 31% rating. Students from Hilliard Bradley also have shared some of their thoughts, Kendall Stanley (12) and Frankie Divincenzo (12) both have similar opinions, Stanley said “she can’t act” and Divincenzo said “literally horrible”. Both girls were talking about the actress Addison Rae. Bella Calderon (12) said “not the best acting but a really good storyline, I would watch it again, almost made me cry''. Her acting skills were a controversial topic to other reviewers online. Pitt News wrote, “the acting isn’t terrible” and also stated “Matthew Lillard plays the school principal and, with his 10 minutes of screen time, has better acting skills than Rae during the entire movie.” Which I agree with, Matthew Lilliard is an amazing actor.
My initial reaction when I first started watching was “when is this going to end”. The beginning scene was just a cliche “my boyfriend dumped me and I’m too sad to go to school” mom and daughter arc. Throughout the film, I noticed that Rae’s acting was a little different from other acting I’ve seen, but since she’s new at the acting gig, I cut her some slack. I compared the movie to the original film “She’s All That” and I will say, “She’s All That” had better acting and better casting than the new movie. I didn’t like that they casted Addison Rae as the main character, I would have preferred a more experienced actor, but since it’s a Netflix original, I didn’t expect a huge Oscar winning actor to be featured in the film. All in all, the movie wasn’t horrible. Rae’s lack of experience in the acting field definitely deteriorated the rating for me. My rating of the movie was 5/10. The acting could use some improvement and the casting could use some work. The movie wasn’t one I would recommend to others. Will you be able to watch this film?
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