SYNOPSIS:
When a teenage girl, Viola, discovers that her soccer team
has been cut from her school, she disguises herself as her
twin brother and takes his place at his new boarding school
for two weeks. Comedy ensues when she falls in love with her
new roommate, Duke, and finds herself the object of affection
of the beautiful Olivia, the girl whom Duke loves. Things
get even more complicated when her twin brother, Sebastian,
finally turns up.
MOVIE
REVIEW
Man
she is not, Woman she is indeed. No, we are not talking about
an identity struggle but maybe a soon-to-be-real crisis here
that teenage girl, Viola, is having here. She is an unusual
girl who has a great passion for the male-dominated sports,
soccer. When her school female soccer team was disbanded and
to prove to her snobbish coach that girls’ skills on
the field are on equal par with the male counterparts, she
decided to impersonate as her twin brother, Sebastian during
his absence and clinch the golden opportunity to play at the
annual inter-school soccer match at his new boarding school.
Viola
(Amanda Bynes), with minimum special make-up effect including
a wig plus the side-burns, could easily pass off as a small
build guy in real life. An effeminate “guy” –
I would say. A story about a woman in disguise how she falls
in gradual love with her so-called buddy male friend, who
does not realize her true gender till the very end; might
ring a bell for those who are familiar of the famous Chinese
classical story “Butterfly Lovers – Zhu YingTai
& Liang ShanBo” make famous again years back by
the then sweet (she still is) Charlie Young and dashing Nick
Wu. Nevertheless, we have beautiful Amanda Bynes and handsome
Channing Tatum – a compatible pair onscreen for “She’s
the Man”. Although both movies comparably have the similar
basic storyline to be built on, having the lead female temporarily
ditching her real identity, the story develops totally different,
no longer about a suffered love. This is more interesting
and love gets complex with other characters involved.
Viola’s
mother hopes and has Viola, her only daughter, promised her
to undergo the basic social etiquettes session to prepare
her debutante – her first social appearance. Guess whom
she’ll meet? Isn’t life is much of coincidences?
“She’s
the Man” is set in today’s world and certainly
a highly entertaining comedy with wacky jokes, incidents etc.
Everything looks quite logical from how Viola successfully
disguises herself as a guy in appearance and mellows her chirpy
voice to adopt a baritone one and learns some so-called conversational
male lingo to warm up with her new male mates for a start.
The part whereby Viola has to change quickly in the carnival
from a girl to a boy then back and fro, somehow backfires.
It is abit exaggerated. Otherwise, it’ll be perfect.
By watching how witty Viola manages to save herself from awkward
situations and unintentionally entangles in a web of relationships,
and winning the heart of his true Prince Charming, is all
fun and funny.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The visual transfer is almost faultless though there are some
unnatural colour spottings at some points. Audio comes with
options of English Dolby 2.0 and English Dolby 5.1.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Making of - This is a 'blink and you missed' sort
of featurette. There isn't much to view except for the cast
taking publicity stills in a studio. You don't get to see
a lot in 5 minutes, do you?
Cast Interviews - A very generic and PR segment
that involves interviews with the cast and crew. Weird thing
is there isn't any names credited so you wouldn't know who
is who.
Lastly, there's the theatrical trailer to round up the disc.
MOVIE
RATING:
 
(An exhilaratingly hilarious movie - the ideal weekend pick
for audience)
OVERALL
DVD RATING :
Review
by Alicia Tee
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