She's All That

I feel just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman except for that whole hooker thing.

She's All That, 1999's version of the Pygmalion myth and starring Rachel Leigh Cook and Freddie Prinze, Jr., is probably the weakest adaptaton of the myth. Unlike the characters in the previous films (My Fair Lady and Pretty Woman), the characters in this film are high school students, and the setting has been moved to a high school. Like the other two films, She's All That tries to make a social commentary by pitting the higher class, wealthier man against the lower class, poorer woman. The movie begins with rich, handsome Zack (Prinze Jr.) returning from Spring Break to find that his rich, beautiful, and vain girlfriend Taylor has dumped him for a former cast member of MTV's The Real World. This rejection doesn't sit well with Zack, who is practically king of the school. Attempting to raise Zack's spirits, his best friend Dean makes a wager for Zack to prove his superior charms by turning any girl into a prom queen in six weeks. The guttersnip they select is Laney (Cook), a lower class Bohemian artist and outcast who unconvincingly hides her beauty under heavy glasses, paint-spattered clothes, and low self-esteem.

Unlike the other films, the makeover in She's All That isn't a key element. In this film the makeover takes about five minutes and requires only a skimpy red dress, contact lenses, makeup, plucked eyebrows, and a hair cut to turn ugly duckling Laney into the swan. There also appears to be no other transformation in Laney and Zack other than the five minute makeover. Unlike the other two films and the original myth itself, their characters do not grow. Zack is already a pretty good guy who never struggles with Laney's eccentricities or has any emotional problems he must overcome. As for Laney, she may look better, but her character is exactly the same.

If filmmakers are going to continue to retell this myth, why don't they breathe some ingenuity and fresh life into it?

If this is the worst, then perhaps the best and most interesting recent example of the Pygmalion myth is Overboard.