She's the Man

[muchabstracted]

lynnoxford and I have seen a movie. Apparently, this means that I update my LJ. We went to She's the Man, the latest Modern High School adaptation of a classic work (in this case, Twelfth Night), expecting it to be mostly hilariously bad.

It was great.

Viola cross-dressing looked, realistically, like a boy. A 14 year old boy, with a round face and kind of girly cheekbones, but a boy. She and Sebastian looked realistically alike, which was a nice touch. The "madness ensues" portions were funny, and even the part of me that was occasionally squirming in embarassment for Viola enjoyed itself. The two main romances were well done -- Duke was great, Viola was great, Duke and Viola together were lovely, and a background character/plot twist they added made it more believable that Olivia might genuinely transfer her crush on Viola to Sebastian.

Just on a sociological level, the grrrrl power message was well done and consistent, and had no problematic undertones that I could catch. I wouldn't have enjoyed the movie less if it wasn't, but it is just such a relief to come out of a movie and not be quietly fuming on some internal political level.

...I want to see it again.

Comments

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's not the kind of review I'd been hearing about this at all. Now I want to see it.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Wow. I expected it to be gag-worthy, at least. Good to hear!

[countessofgroan.livejournal.com]

Oh, great! I'm so glad a modern retelling of my favorite Shakespeare play is actually good! It did look interesting (mostly because of the Twelfth Night thing), but I was afraid it would be just another teen movie.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I want to see it too! If nothing else, I have to keep up on my collection of Modern High School Shakespeare adaptations.