She’s the Man

last updated 8 January 2015

In the grand tradition of 10 Things I Hate About You, Hollywood has taken a great work of literature and turned it into an idiotic teen film, said Grady Hendrix in The New York Sun. She's the Man is based on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, so it's natural that five minutes in, 'œAmanda Bynes has a tampon shoved up one nostril.' Bynes, playing Viola, is in this predicament for the love of soccer. When her school's girls' team is dismantled, she decides to dress as her twin brother in order to play on his prep school's squad. Viola's transformation from cute girl into androgynous weirdo is truly cringe-worthy, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. When Bynes attempts to talk as a boy, it comes out as 'œa patois…so cheesy-wrong that you stare with a mix of fascination and horror.' Okay, so 'œSyriana it is not,' said Allison Benedikt in the Chicago Tribune. But all the conventional hijinks and their eventual resolutions land in the right places, thanks to a pair of seasoned screenwriters and to director Andy Fickman. And while Bynes and her cast mates seem to think that making funny faces counts as comedy, they're so adorably sincere that you can't really hate them.

Rating: PG-13