Sydney White

Finally, what the world has been asking for: a modern re-envisioning of the Snow White fairy tale, set in college. And who says Hollywood doesn’t have its finger on the pulse of America? OK, so there are certainly worse ideas out there (trust me, I just watched the trailer for Uwe Boll’s upcoming Postal about 10 minutes before writing this review). It’s even a concept that could have been fairly entertaining if only it had been placed in the right hands. But this isn’t, say, the Coen Brothers reimagining The Odyssey in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). This is Amanda Bynes and the director of American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006) making, well, I’m not sure anyone involved knew exactly what they were trying to make or who they were making it for. So, what we’re left with is a college comedy aimed at tweens with a smidge of seemingly accidental social commentary mixed in with a smattering of geek humor. In short, Sydney White is a mess of a movie, and even worse, it’s an uninteresting, feeble mess.

The film’s biggest misstep is how heavy-handed the allusions to Snow White are. Every reference and intimation is presented not with a wink, but with a slap across the face. Instead of Snow White, you get Sydney White (Bynes), college freshman and daughter of a plumber. And instead of Prince Charming, you get frat-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold Tyler Prince (Matt Long, Ghost Rider). At first, it’s slightly amusing, but as the film goes on (and on and on and on), the constant ham-fisted references become groan-inducing. Changing the Seven Dwarves into the Seven Dorks is one thing, even if it means Grumpy has been turned into an ornery blogger looking for a synonym for “douchebaggery.” But when the movie goes out of its way to have a poisoned Apple computer instead of a poison apple (painfully set up in the film’s opening, making it Chekhov’s MacBook Pro), you know things have gotten out of hand.

The film makes a few attempts at social satire, but its theme of dorks versus the elite—with the ultimate revelation that “there’s a little bit of geek inside all of us”—is just a recycled mix of Mean Girls (2004) and Revenge of the Nerds (1984). The movie’s also presumably a transition picture, meant to push Bynes away from her usual teenage fare and into the world of more mature work, but it seems that someone mistook “mature” for “cleavage.” As an aside, whoever thought the fake-looking tan Bynes sports throughout the movie was a good idea needs to have their eyes examined, unless looking like George Hamilton has suddenly come into fashion with the kids these days.

In all honesty, it’s obvious that I’m not the audience for this movie. It seems to be intended for those who will find amusement in the jokes about keg stands and Viva Piñata. (If you don’t know that Viva Piñata is an Xbox game, chances are you aren’t the audience for this movie either.) But regardless, whatever innocuous charm the film has going for it in its first half soon disappears in a hail of lame sitcom-style wackiness and overwrought “nerds are weird” humor, something that silenced even the young man sitting a couple of rows behind me who had literally cackled at everything Bynes said at the beginning of the film. And this doesn’t even take into account the film’s overwhelming desire to tie everything up in a nice, tidy, clichéd package. If a grown man who very audibly chortles at the mere sound of Amanda Bynes delivering any line can’t find humor in the latter half of the film, how are the rest of us expected to fare? Rated PG-13 for some language, sexual humor and partying.