He's All That (2021)

The gender-swapped remake is a venerable tradition, and He's All That arrives with impeccable lineage: She's All That, which was itself Pygmalion, which was itself a man teaching a flower girl to speak properly and calling it romance. Mark Waters directs Addison Rae, a TikTok personality of some renown, as Padgett Sawyer, an influencer who must drag an antisocial photographer named Cameron into prom king contention to salvage her follower count. The bet is the engine. The bet is always the engine. We have seen this chassis before, and the new paint does not hide the mileage.

The supporting cast is more varied than the 1999 model, with Black, Latina, Asian, and South Asian performers occupying prominent roles, though the screenplay never troubles itself to explain why. Two of Padgett's friends, Quinn and Nisha, attend prom as a couple, a detail the film offers without ceremony and then declines to revisit. Cameron's makeover proceeds on the assumption that his prior appearance was a problem requiring correction, which sits uneasily beside any claim of self-acceptance. The narrative does glance at the economics of sponsorship, at a girl hiding her mother's nurse salary behind a borrowed condo, but the critique lands on vanity, not money, and the final act restores Padgett to her brand deals with the enthusiasm of a shareholder.

The film's lesson arrives as Padgett livestreams a confession at prom, declining the crown and announcing that authenticity outranks engagement. It is a soft sermon, delivered in under two minutes and promptly buried under a boy on a horse. The result is a remake that swaps genders without swapping much else, a mildly diversified, mildly self-aware confection that wants credit for the trade and none of the labor. Twenty-eight percent on Rotten Tomatoes feels about right. The horse, at least, is blameless.