It isn't the worst idea
for a Shakespeare rewrite. After all, 10 Things I Hate About You—co-written by two
of She's The Man's
screenwriters—took greater liberties with The Taming Of The Shrew. But then 10 Things didn't depend on Bynes'
cross-dressing skills, which are, to put it politely, undernourished. She comes
out of the makeup process looking more like a prepubescent boy than an athletic
teen, which is a constant distraction. But it isn't as big a problem as its
star's interpretation of teenage manhood, which for some reason involves
talking like an effeminate Alabaman. When Bynes, feigning lust to impress some
new friends, looks at a girl's ass and says, "Ah'd tap thaaat," you can almost
hear the film sputtering to a stop in embarrassment. Bynes appears in
practically every scene, and the film seems to have been designed as a showcase
for her comedic skills, which she apparently left behind in the trailer.
That's too bad, because
there's potential in the idea of bending genders in a high-school setting,
where everyone learns that wandering out of accepted roles comes with a price.
But that potential is left almost entirely untapped in favor of broad comedy,
girl-fights, and farcical situations that wouldn't make it into an episode of Three's
Company.
Only undiscriminating teenage girls, English-lit grad students looking for
thesis fodder, and die-hard Mr. Show devotees who want to see David Cross wear a silly
beard in the part of Bynes' wacky principal need bother with this one.
