Title IX takes a whipping in
She's the Man
.
Attending the UA South is inevitably an experience worthy of its own semiotic analysis, but this week's visit proved especially thought-provoking. First, there's the phenomenon of an almost entirely non-white, working-class audience taking in a movie about rich white people, there being so few viable alternatives. Frankly, the Screener finds this infuriating. In British neighborhoods with majority Asian populations,
***image1***
you'd have to hunt to find a theater
not
showing Hindi films-of the caliber of
Lagaan
,
Bhagat Singh
and
Devdas
; where are our New Mexican equivalents? Will the much-touted burgeoning film industry make movies for the people actually
from
here, who actually work (and spend money) here? Will there be, for example, movies in Keres-Tanoan and Spanish? Somehow we doubt it.
Then there was the title of this week's tweener flick, which greatly befuddled the young lads standing in line ahead of us. Two for
She's the...Boy? Man? Girl?
they mumbled, whether from extreme coolness or embarrassment that they were requesting tickets to anything starring the chalky medium, the carrier vehicle, the linseed oil of the erstwhile
Amanda Show
- namely, one cheery Ms. Amanda Bynes.
Thing of it is, if you're going to market your movie based on the box-office allure of its starlet, she'd better be more than Jennifer Aniston lite, and Ms. Bynes, sadly, fails to raise the bar, even with props from Shakespeare. When soccer-mad Viola finds out her school has summarily done away with its women's team (this being a parallel universe in which Title IX does not exist), she decides to impersonate her twin brother Sebastian, gone to London for two weeks to play with his
***image2***
band (so much for being lost at sea). With sidies barely glued on, Vi moves into the men's dorm at Illyria Prep where Madcap Hijinks Ensue as she swaggers and grabs her crotch, makes second string on the soccer team, falls for her roommate Duke (Tatum) and is pursued by Olivia (arresting newcomer Laura Ramsey).
Alas, girl + guys' dorm = plentiful reaction shots (to locker-room towel-dropping and so forth), and we've never seen such godawful muggings as the ones produced by Bynes. With a stronger actress, and dialogue with occasional signs of life,
She's the Man
could have had its moments, albeit of the pastel Junior-League variety. And contra
Bend It Like Beckham
, Viola's athletic Tar Heel ambitions never feel genuine; even the supposedly climactic soccer game must take a back seat to the gender revelations contained therein. Suffice it to say that
She's the Man
has no greatness thrust upon it-not even of the cute shopping-mall outfit variety.
