He's All That Is Not That Bad

A female lead with no acting experience but with a massive following on social media. A male lead who I assumed just wanted a quick cash grab. A high-school rom-com written by a 50-year-old male. All the ingredients needed for a certified train wreck, which was what I wanted. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m better than anyone else, talking about how I only watch classic movies like “Clockwork Orange” or “The Silence of the Lambs”. Truthfully I have no intentions of watching either. My favourite movie genre is unsurprisingly romcoms, and my favourite guilty pleasure sub-section of that genre is “the stories no one asked for”.

So when I saw the movie on my Netflix, I excitedly added to it my queue. And after viewing it, I’m sorry to say that this movie isn’t bad. It’s worse than bad. And do you know what’s worse than being bad?

Being boring.

There is absolutely nothing memorable about He’s All That. He’s All That is a tease. You would think it would be a trashy and stupid movie, but it just…nothing. The only time it got close to the level of unbearable I wanted was when the male lead rode in on a horse. That was the weird, cheesy thing I was looking for, but I only got 30 seconds of it. An hour and a half long movie, and I only got 30 seconds of laughable cringe? Unacceptable.

To make matters worse, the premise for the movie doesn’t even make sense. There is only this much disbelief I can suspend before my logical thinking takes over and goes, “What the hell?". The entire basis of the movie started because the female lead caught her boyfriend cheating on her while live-streaming. They broke up, she was upset, and then she lost followers. See, I know the internet is a terrible place where the childhood characters of trolls and swamp monsters live, but it’s not an entirely heartless place. No one is going to unfollow her and somehow still gives the cheating ex-boyfriend glory and fame. If a mistake is already this jarring in the first 20 minutes, you would think that the rest is just going to blow up in flames, but instead, it’s just a slow torturous burn that makes you wonder if you should keep watching since you’re almost done or live in the shame that you didn’t switch off the movie earlier.

If you have an hour and a half to waste, just play this movie in the background. At the very least, it could maybe make a semi-relaxing white noise background. Here’s hoping the lacklustre script cannot pierce your subconsciousness, though. Because if it can, you will start crying about how the movie is such a wasted opportunity for a fantastic hate-watch.