She's the Man

She's the Man

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Andy Fickman
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner
Tom Rosenberg
Gary Lucchesi
Screenplay by Karen McCullah Lutz
Kirsten Smith
Based on Twelfth Night by
William Shakespeare
Starring
Music by Nathan Wang
Cinematography Greg Gardiner
Edited by Michael Jablow
Production
company
Distributed by DreamWorks Pictures
Release dates
  • March 17, 2006 (2006-03-17)
Running time
105 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $20 million
Box office $57.2 million[1]

She's the Man is a 2006 American romantic sport-comedy film directed by Andy Fickman, inspired by William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night. The film stars Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Laura Ramsey, and Vinnie Jones.

The film centers on teenager Viola Hastings who enters her brother's school in his place, pretending to be male, in order to play with the boys' soccer team.

Plot

Viola Hastings (Amanda Bynes) is a teenage girl who plays for her high school soccer team. When the school suddenly cuts the girls' team, Viola requests to join the boys' team instead but is refused by their misogynistic coach. Meanwhile, her twin brother, Sebastian (James Kirk) is supposed to enroll in Illyria, an elite boarding school, but he secretly goes to London for a contest with his fledging band instead. Viola agrees to cover for him and decides to pass herself off as Sebastian in hopes of joining their boys' team and beating Cornwall in an upcoming game to prove their coach and her cocky ex-boyfriend, Justin (Robert Hoffman), wrong. With the help of her stylist friend, Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), she is transformed into "Sebastian" and joins Illyria in his place.

While moving in, she meets her roommate, Duke Orsino (Channing Tatum), an attractive soccer player and Illyria's team captain. During tryouts, Viola fails to impress Coach Dinklage (Vinnie Jones) and is assigned to second string, much to her dismay. Her teammates including Duke initially dislike "Sebastian" due to his awkward and strange behavior. However, with help from Paul once again, they begin to accept him into their social circle. "Sebastian" then gets the popular and pretty Olivia (Laura Ramsey) as his lab partner, which frustrates Duke as he has feelings for her. "Sebastian" agrees to put in a good word for Duke if he promises to train him to be a better soccer player. Coach Dinklage eventually notices "Sebastian's" effort and improvement, thus promoting him to first string.

At the Junior League carnival, Viola works a shift at the kissing booth and shares a kiss with Duke. Duke expresses to "Sebastian" that he might move on from Olivia as he is starting to like Viola now. Viola is delighted as she secretly feels the same way.

Olivia who now has a crush on "Sebastian" asks Duke out on a date in hopes that it will make "Sebastian" jealous. Viola who is unaware of Olivia's true intentions is enraged instead because Duke has now abandoned his interest in Viola. When Viola finds out the truth, she encourages Olivia to tell Sebastian directly about her feelings.

The situation becomes even more complicated when the real Sebastian returns from London a day early unbeknownst to Viola. As soon as he arrives at Illyria, Olivia confesses her feelings and kisses him. Duke, seeing this, believes his roommate has betrayed him. When "Sebastian" returns to their room, the two have an argument and Duke kicks him out. Viola oversleeps and misses the first half of the game, while the real Sebastian is mistaken for "Sebastian" and winds up poorly playing his sister's game instead. Monique, along with Illyria's pesky dorm director (and Olivia's stalker) Malcolm, report to Principal Gold (David Cross) of Viola's impersonation, who believes them and halts the game to inform the crowd that Sebastian is a girl. The real Sebastian proves himself to be male by exposing his genitals (off-screen). At half-time, Viola explains the situation to Sebastian and they switch places again.

Duke, still furious at "Sebastian", refuses to cooperate with him on the field. Determined to makes amends with Duke, "Sebastian" explains that he is actually Viola, convincing Duke and everyone else by exposing her breasts (off-screen). Coach Dinklage agrees to let Viola play anyway, sternly informing Cornwall's misogynistic coach that Illyria doesn't discriminate based on gender. Illyria wins the game when Viola scores a goal, finally humiliating Justin and the rest of the Cornwall boys.

Everyone at Illyria celebrates their victory over Cornwall, except for Duke who is hurt about Viola's deception. She invites Duke to her debutante ball, but he doesn't respond to her invitation. At the ball, Viola is skeptical that Duke will show up but he eventually does just in time to escort her on stage, where they share a kiss. At the end of the film, Viola and Duke are shown happily playing on Illyria's soccer team together.

Cast

Reception

Box office

The film opened at #4 at the North American box office making $10.7 million USD in its opening weekend. Its budget was approximately $20,000,000. She's the Man grossed a total of $33.7 million domestically with a total gross of $57.2 million worldwide.[1]

Critical response

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave She's the Man a rating of 43%, indicating generally negative reviews, based on 109 critiques. The critical consensus reads, "Shakespeare's wit gets lost in translation with She's the Man's broad slapstick, predictable jokes, and unconvincing plotline."[2] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, the film has a rating score of 55 out of 100 based on 28 reviews.[3]

See also

References

External links

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