She’s The Man
2006: Andy Fickman

In the range of modern-teen transpositions of Shakespeare stories, this is one of the better known. It’s perhaps not the worst of them, though nothing else comes to mind that is worse. Viola is a girl who wants to play soccer on the boy’s team, and they won’t let her, so she goes to a nearby boarding school and passes herself off as her brother who is newly enrolled there (but who is conveniently playing hooky to tour with his rock band — by a series of random shenanigans this is all contrived so as to elude his parents). Her roommate is “Duke” Orsino, with whom she forms an instant attachment. A variety of vulgar antics ensue, full of the sexually suggestive, but not quite R-rated, of a sort to amuse libidinous teenagers without much interest in where the story is actually going. In the course of the narrative, she shows that she can be a debutante and a hard-kicking soccer-player as well.

One of the puzzling or amusing byproducts of the movie (depending on where you’re coming from) is the fact that whereas it seems to set out with the agenda of being a feminist piece, showing that a girl can be as good as a guy, it aggressively undercuts itself at almost every turn. In the course of the film, Viola proves herself more than adequate to compete with the boys as a soccer player. As a human being, however, her grotesquely parodic self-presentation as a male is shallow and offensive not just to women but to other guys, and wins her nothing but contempt from the real boys in the film. Duke finds her quite an oddity. Her professed obsession with sex puzzles them. It’s not clear whether the makers of the film have outsmarted themselves, or whether this is an intentional irony. In the long run it probably doesn’t matter much. There’s a point where recursive irony short-circuits itself and expends all its energies in vain.

Clearly the makers of this film saw 10 Things I Hate About You (and perhaps O) and decided that they needed to work the same transformations on a different play, to see whether they could squeeze another golden egg from the same goose. So they chose Twelfth Night. The result shows a superficial understanding of the plot and no awareness of the thematic structure; it is a mechanical, paint-by-number treatment with neither nuance nor interest. It’s not completely horrible, but it’s not particularly interesting or inspired, either. If you want to see much better modern-dress Shakespeare stories (with different dialogue) investigate either 10 Things I Hate About You or O. If you want to see a much better movie about girl’s soccer, watch Bend it Like Beckham.

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