Addison Rae is mediocre at best in Netflix's He's All That

 

An Uncalled Review by Irina

Let me start off by saying I think that Addison gets a lot of undeserved hate, if you came to just read me spew garbage at her, this is not the place- well... keep reading. Addison, Tik-Tok star turned musical artist and now turned actress, stars as the lead, Padget Sawyer in Netflix's remake of 1999 She's All That. If you aren't familiar with Addison Rae, she's best known for doing 30-second dances and videos on Tik-Tok, almost every teen or even child knows her name, and 80% of them all hate her with a passion. There was a lot of anticipation for He's All That in the younger world as well, you could say it's because everyone loves the original She's All That, but I would say that not many teens knew of She's All That until Netflix's remake came out. People have known of Addison starring and the general filming of He's All That for a while and the response was mostly ridicule... until the trailer came out. After the trailer came out, a surprising amount of people were constantly commenting that Addison's acting didn't seem to be that bad (and for the amount of hate she usually gets, that's a compliment). Then the actual movie came out. I would like to say, that considering it's Addison's first movie, I was one of the people that were pleasantly surprised by her acting in the trailer. However, after watching the full movie, I wasn't that sure. I was impressed by the emotion she displayed during the Gatsby scene where Cameron (the male lead) storms off at her but most of her line deliveries were extremely forced. It sounded like she was trying her best, but it was like she was directly reading off a script. To be fair, like most Netflix teen flicks, there were some seriously embarrassing lines (like the butt line that I won't elaborate on) characters had to read that I can't even blame the actors if the delivery is off. Not to mention, Tanner Buchanan who plays the male lead Cameron, wasn't exactly amazing either and considering this is Addison's first acting project (unless you count her scripted video with Khloe Kardashian), she wasn't far behind the other actors. You might wonder why I'm focusing so much on Addison, but it's just because the whole movie seems like it was built around her. In the original She's All That, the movie is more focused around Laney Boggs, the bet-character (for lack of better words) of the movie. You get to know Laney's character and life more than Zack's character. Following that example, seeing that Cameron is the bet-character in He's All That, you would assume he would be the focus, but it's not. The movie's first scene starts off with Padgett, and Padgett's whole character seems almost identical to the way Addison presents herself to the world in real life. Padgett is a social media star and this becomes a huge part of the movie and even her relationship with Cameron. There's even a scene of Padgett singing and dancing (not that well) to Katy Perry's Teenage Dream that seems like it was created just to push Addison's singing talents. I was originally confused as to why there was such a random karaoke party in the movie in the first place, and although the film tries to explain the karaoke party's existence as the first time Padgett and Cameron really connect (while embarrassingly singing), I have a sneaking suspicion the whole thing was made up to try to convince the world that Addison is really talented as a singer and performer. I don't know how to transition so I'll just say it, the number of ads and promotions in this movie were HORRENDOUS. It seemed like every single scene had 2 promotions lying not so casually in the background, from eos to pizza hut, to core water(??), to KFC, to old navy, there was so much in this movie it felt like watching a poorly directed commercial. All those cons being said, I do think that people are being unusually harsh on this movie, considering that Netflix films targeting teens are generally (believe it or not) a whole lot trashier (talking about you, The Kissing Booth). My point is, the bar for Netflix teen flicks is already on the floor, and He's All That wasn't any lower than that, maybe more like chair leg lengthed?