Shakespeare tries soccer in 'She's the Man'

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 17, 2006 at midnight

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OK, so Shakespeare didn't know a yellow card from a penalty kick, but that didn't stop a group of eager filmmakers from making a soccer game the highlight of She's the Man, a romantic comedy that updates Twelfth Night - or something like it.

The movie drops a gender-bending story into a prep-school setting and never looks back. No need to adhere too closely to the Bard's language, because a substantial portion of the movie's target audience probably doesn't care whether some of the jokes try for a goofy brand of literacy.

Our heroine, for example, attends Cornwall Academy but switches to Illyria Prep when she poses as her twin brother.

Amanda Bynes (of TV's What I Like About You) plays Viola, a high-school student who wants to play on a boy's soccer team to prove, well, that she can. She's upset because Cornwall cut its girls soccer program and wouldn't allow her to try out for the boys team. In desperation, she poses as her twin brother, who conveniently exits the movie and heads for London. He's trying to be a musician.

None of this really matters. Movies like She's the Man aren't about plot or imaginatively wrought comedy. They're about cute girls, hunky boys and silly situations. If you believe that Bynes - donning a short-haired wig and binding her breasts - could pass as a boy, you're living in the same giddy alternate universe in which this movie takes place.

Bynes lowers her voice and tries to talk like she imagines a boy would talk, which turns out to be a strange cross between a wannabe rapper and someone with a nervous disorder. Viola's roommate at Illyria, Duke Orsino (Channing Tatum), is a star soccer player who doesn't know he's talking to a girl pretending to be a boy.

The script is designed to bring Viola and Duke together at the end, making room for some of the obligatory characters in between. There's the totally conceited girl (Alex Brekinridge), the girl all the boys ogle (Laura Ramsey) and, of course, the bespectacled geek (Emily Perkins) whose braces are so prominent that they look like scaffolding.

Any adults who wander into the proceedings are made to look like idiots, most notably Viola's mom (Julie Haggerty), who presses her daughter to abandon her soccer interests and attend the upcoming debutante ball. Illyria's principal (David Cross) is an out-of-it doofus.

When it comes to mutilating Shakespeare, the movie has a fine pedigree. Among the credited writers: Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, who wrote 10 Things I Hate About You, a version of The Taming of the Shrew.

Set in dorm rooms, dining halls and locker rooms, She's the Man tries for effervescence. Credit director Andy Fickman with keeping things moving, which is about all you can expect from She's the Man, which can seem as hyperactive as Bynes' performance.

A final word: Movies such as She's the Man are almost beyond anyone's rating system. Tweens, at least those who are allowed to attend PG-13 movies, may have fun; no one else need apply.

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