He's All That (2021)

If you’re looking for a wholly original story in movies, you’re not going to find it. Most stories have already been told. It’s difficult to find something that doesn’t tell a similar story to one that people already know. That’s why I always say that originality doesn’t come from a story. Originality comes from the way the story is told. One filmmaker could tell a story in a completely different way from another filmmaker. The things that they bring to the story make it feel original.

Things get more complicated when it comes to reboots and remakes and all that sort of stuff. Making it feel more original can be tougher because the building blocks are essentially the same. It’s not just the story that feels similar. The characters, their interactions, the locations… All that sort of stuff feels the same, too. The filmmakers need to find a new twist on the same material to make it feel fresh. Maybe they add some new themes to modernize the story.

A new theme can really bring a remake or reboot together. It allows the same story to be told, while adding another layer to make things a little more interesting. The people watching who think that the filmmakers are ruining their favourite movie might find something surprising with the new telling. They might be able to give it credit for what it did. Or they might be sexist assholes who hate a Ghostbusters remake from pre-production to years after release simply because it put women in the lead roles. Hopefully the first option.

That’s how we get to He’s All That, a gender-swapped remake of She’s All That. Much like the original, the movie was based on a bet. Padgett (Addison Rae) was a social media influencer who went through a bad breakup on a live stream and lost a bunch of followers. In an attempt to get her following back, she accepted a bet from Alden (Madison Pettis) to turn one of the most undesirable people in the school, Cameron (Tanner Buchanan), into the prom king. Romance ensued.

He's All That was clearly a remake of She’s All That. The core elements were all there, just with the roles reversed. The girl made a bet that she could turn the guy into the prom king, where the original had the guy making the bet that he could turn the girl into the prom queen. The friend turned foe twist was in there, with Madison Pettis instead of Paul Walker. The sibling who was maybe a little too involved with their brother’s life taking the place of the sibling maybe a little too involved with their sister’s life. The prom dance scene was there. Kiss Me was on the soundtrack again, though it was a cover version.

The big change, however, with bringing this gender-swapped version of the movie to the modern day was to add the influence of social media on everything. Padgett was a major social influencer. She lost that popularity early in the movie because of the livestream breakup she had when she found her boyfriend cheating on her. People memed a snot bubble she had while scream crying. The boyfriend was also an important part of this story. He was an aspiring musician, so a lot of what he did was also geared towards fame and popularity. The hook that made He’s All That have a reason to exist as a remake, beyond the financial benefits the studio was sure to be hoping for, was fame and social media.

There was a message that came with that theme, too. He’s All That tried to show that social media and big followings weren’t… Well… All that. Padgett started the movie as an influencer who tried to hide her true living situation behind the glamour of her online persona. She pretended to be someone she wasn’t. She built her life behind that lie. Cameron didn’t participate in social media, enjoying life by just being himself. Except, not really. He was also hiding from his feelings about losing his father. But he was much truer to himself than Padgett ever was to herself. He had simply isolated himself, emotionally, from other people. Including his sister.

It was through their relationship, which started from a bet and would lead to trouble later, that they both learned to change their ways. Cameron opened himself up to his friends and family. Padgett was where the theme really hit. Kind of. When she was betrayed by Alden, she lost everything. People knew she wasn’t rich. Cameron knew their relationship started with a bet. But, you know what? In true romantic comedy fashion, it opened her up to being who she always should have been. She started being proud of her background. Her mom, her humble class status, just plain not being the horrible person that Alden was. She didn’t need to present herself as perfect or rich. Her imperfection and relatability made her perfect. There was even a whole speech about it where she owned the embarrassing moments that tore her down early in the movie. It didn’t matter what people online thought about her. It mattered that she was true to herself and that she was happy being herself.

This was an interesting theme because of what we know about social media. It’s an addictive, time-consuming, mentally-exhausting thing. People, myself included, are addicted to the high of other people liking what they post. Pictures, opinions, videos, links… All kinds of stuff. The more we focus on social media, the more depressed we get from the negativity. The more we get addicted to the likes, the more likely it is that we start to tailor our output to what we think others will like. We lose ourselves to what we want to present to the world. We lose our mind to opinions that other people share. Are we really who we are when we use social media? What if we just tried to be ourselves instead of trying to farm engagement?

The only real issue with the theme was that the ending spoiled everything that had been built up. I’m not talking about the moment at prom where Padgett got up on stage and owned her embarrassing social media moments. That was good stuff. That was her realizing that what people thought about you online didn’t matter. What mattered was your self worth. A good message that the demographic of He’s All That needed to hear. The problem was the stuff that came after that climactic moment. The movie closed on Padgett riding a horse and going live on her social media to let everyone know she was riding a horse. She even forced her new boyfriend, Cameron, who didn’t like social media at all, to participate in her live stream. That scene went completely against the themes that the movie had been utilizing for the entire runtime. It was a movie that thrived on letting people know that social media wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and that you had to be true to yourself and not your followers if you wanted to be truly happy. After a moment of clarity at prom, Padgett fell back on her old ways and brought someone else into it. Someone who adamantly said earlier in the movie that he didn’t do social media. Way to fumble the ball in the red zone, writers.

In order to update She’s All That into He’s All That, the same story but gender-flipped for a new generation, the writers added the social media theme to make things different enough. They wanted to give their version of the story a way to stand on its own. They wanted to justify telling the story again, by adding a new layer to things. For the most part, it worked. The ending faltered what was a strong theme, but aside from that final scene, the theme was solid. Did they make a good movie? That’s a whole other question. They made something that felt like a Disney Channel Original mixed with a more adult-oriented teen movie of the late 90s. It was a strange mixture that worked in some moments but completely missed the mark in others. Was it good? No. Was it bad? No. It was somewhere in the middle.

Remakes can be a tough challenge to completely succeed in. There’s a fine line that must be ridden to make a successful remake. That’s probably why so many movies go the route of legacy sequel, now. A remake must be beholden to what made the original special, while also branching out to do its own thing. It’s much easier to make a legacy sequel that can directly pull elements from the original while blazing its own trail. Do I find legacy sequels entertaining? Sure. But I’ll always be more impressed by something like He’s All That, which tried something new without directly calling back to the original. Outside of a couple cast members in new roles, of course.

Originality isn’t something that exists in great abundance anymore. If you want originality on a story level, that is. There are only so many stories that can be told and most of them have been told at this point. Where originality truly shines is in how the stories are told. The hero’s journey. The search for lost treasure. Romance. Slashers. The originality comes in the details, not in the general structure. You could line up twenty people and get them to tell you the same story. No two people will tell it exactly the same. That’s where originality comes from. That’s what I look for. Originality is not in the story. It is in how the story is told.

Now it’s time for some notes, and I’m sure there are a bunch with this one:

• Madison Pettis returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies with He’s All That. She was previously in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva la Fiesta!, and The Search for Santa Paws.
• Next up is Matthew Lillard. He popped up as the principal in He’s All That, but was also seen in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and Wing Commander.
• The other cast member to return from She’s All That for He’s All That was Rachael Leigh Cook. She was previously in Sunday “Bad” Movies in a little movie called Spirit Halloween: The Movie.
• Finally, Bianca Brewton was in Sandy Wexler and He’s All That.
• Have you seen He’s All That? What did you think? What do you think would make remakes successful? Let me know in the comments, or you could tell me on Bluesky or Threads.
• Bluesky, Threads, and the comments are good places to tell me what I should be checking out for Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Now it’s time to take a look at what’s coming up. I’m pretty sure I told you in the last couple posts that I’ll be writing a little something about 1993’s Showdown. Well, I’ve got another movie lined up now. After I put up the post for Showdown, I’ll be writing about God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust. Yeah, I went back to that franchise. We’ll see what’s after that. I’ll let you know next time. See you then.

2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus (2021)

The world changed in late 2019. A virus came out of Wuhan, China. As far as we know. This virus would spread through the end of 2019 and early 2020 before most nations took note of it. Then it happened. Everything began to shut down. People were told to stay indoors to prevent the rapid spread of this virus, called Covid-19. Did they listen? Some did, some didn’t. All the major sports leagues in North America shut down in March 2020. Movies stopped filming for a while. When everything came back, there were major protocols in place. Masks, distancing, that sort of stuff.

Covid-19 changed the way stories were told, too. Not all stories, of course. But there were a few movies and television shows that took the virus and made it an integral part of the story. Superstore’s final season showed the staff at Cloud 9 dealing with the virus in the workplace. Songbird was about a world that had been ravaged by Covid-23, a later form of the virus. Dumb Money showed people at their jobs masked up and all that. There were also a whole bunch of other shows and movies I don’t watch or haven’t watched and can’t really comment on.

Christian movies did something else during the pandemic, though. Most entertainment was about finding a way to move on, a way to live. Or they went dystopian. Christian movies decided to go the dystopian route, but with their own persecution themes. Maybe I’m generalizing the Christian movies of the pandemic era. Maybe I’m describing one specific movie that brought the Christian persecution complex and the dystopian Covid-19 storytelling together.

2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus was a dystopian Christian Covid-19 movie. Covid-19 was a Chinese creation to enslave the world under one government. People weren’t allowed to meet, travel, or practice Christianity. Roy (Joshua Wesely) and his sister, Hannah (Antonia Speer) lost their parents to… I think it was suicide because they couldn’t handle a world without Christianity. Roy wanted to bring Christianity back. He worked with his sister to build an underground Christian following and fight back against the man.

I’m going to put the persecution complex on the backburner for a moment. The first thing I really want to bring up with 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus was that they actively made Covid-19 a political weapon, as opposed to the deadly virus it is. The movie was clearly written from the perspective of a Covid-19 denier. You know, the same people who refused to wear masks, refused to get vaccinated, and would berate other people for doing so. People like Ricky Schroeder, who would go to a store and get confrontational about the store upholding a mask mandate. That was where the story came from. The only difference was that there was some religion mixed into it.

Think about the story of 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus for a moment. The Chinese made the virus as a way to create one world government. That was the sole purpose of the virus, if the virus was ever real. (It was, just not in the world of this movie.) The masking and social distancing was a form of control, rather than preventing the spread of a sickness. If people met, they could rebel. Meetings were outlawed. If people could travel, they could leave their homes to rebel against authority. The virus wasn’t really a virus in this world. It was an excuse for the government to enslave people. Hence the title of the movie.

However, 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus wasn’t satisfied with pitching this dystopian world that went against all scientific truth. Religious persecution complexes had to be thrown into the mix for good measure. As the opening text stated, “meetings are illegal, travelling is illegal, and Christianity is illegal.” It wasn’t just that the government was controlling who people could see or where people could be. They were also controlling people’s beliefs. Specifically, they were disallowing Christianity. Other religions may have been fine. They never got into that. Christianity, though. That was not allowed.

Many Christian movies fall on this same imaginary sword. They make a strawman argument that people are trying to kill Christianity, like there’s an active war against the religion. It’s a war that doesn’t exist. Sure, there are arguments that people sometimes take the wrong ideals from Christianity. Maybe we shouldn’t be against homosexuality or having sex before marriage. Maybe abortion should be allowed because women should be able to control what happens with their own bodies. That’s the kind of stuff people fight with Christians about. They don’t fight with Christians because Christians have faith. Okay, some people do, but it doesn’t happen nearly as often as Christian movies make it seem.

2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus played right into the persecution complex that Christian movies frequently have. The main storyline was about the lead characters rebelling against their religious oppression. They met up to preach. They shared sermons through DVDs. They spray painted the Jesus fish wherever they went. Their religion was being brought back through an underground movement. It was a fight to bring religion back because the government in charge outlawed it.

The merging of the Christian persecution complex and Covid-19 denial made 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus feel more like a piece of propaganda than an actual movie. It wasn’t important to tell a captivating story. The importance was on pitching these two ideas to the public. The filmmakers wanted people to believe that Covid-19 really was a way for the government to control people, though it was taken to the extreme in this dystopian world. They wanted people to believe that Covid-19 was going to be used as a weapon to get rid of religion. That’s just not the case.

I’ve seen some half decent or, at the very least, entertaining religious movies for Sunday “Bad” Movies. 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus was not one of them. The performances lacked that natural charisma brought by someone like David A.R. White through his movies. The writing lacked the bonkers, off the wall nature of something like Miracle Man. The persecution complex lacked the anger of something like Last Ounce of Courage. And the dystopia wasn’t as threatening as something like what the Left Behind movies had. Every single aspect was inferior to other movies I’ve written about.

The Covid-19 era did a lot to change the movie industry. Certain rules were put in place to keep people safe while they made the entertainment that you or I watch. Masks, reduced casts and crews, smaller scale stories. Even a Covid denial movie like 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus followed the rules. There weren’t really any scenes with crowds. The scenes that had more than three people had them spaced far apart. As much as the story denied Covid-19, the movie followed the mandates. As far as I could tell by watching it.

What changed the most when Covid-19 hit, though, was the way movies were seen. 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus wasn’t in theaters. I found it on Tubi. More movies than ever have gone to streaming services because the lockdowns during the height of the pandemic pushed people away from the theatrical experience. Theaters were closed during much of 2020 and 2021. Everyone turned to streaming for their movie entertainment. Many haven’t gone back.

2019 and 2020 changed everything. Movies, shopping, and public spaces changed in ways nobody could have expected. Those changes stuck. They weren’t temporary. The world now is much different from the world only six years ago. We’re not being controlled by a government that wants to ban Christianity. Oh no. But we adapted to a world with a new deadly virus, and we didn’t turn back into what we were before. That one point in time had a major effect on day-to-day life, as well as many of the details within.

Let’s wrap this post up with a few notes:

• Of course, there weren’t any actors in 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus who were in other Sunday “Bad” Movies, nor did either of the directors direct anything else for the blog. Yet.
• I mentioned David A.R. White in this post. He was in Brother White, God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2, God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, God’s Not Dead: We the People, and Second Glance.
• I also mentioned Miracle Man, Last Ounce of Courage, and Left Behind.
• Have you seen 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus? What were your thoughts? Share them in the comments, or find me on Bluesky or Threads.
• Bluesky, Threads, and the comments are good places to leave suggestions for what I should watch in future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts.
• Now we take a look forward. Right now, I’ve got two posts in the works. One of them is for He’s All That. The other is for Showdown. I have the ideas for both those posts and I think they’re pretty juicy. We’ll see how juicy they really are when I get them done. See you whenever that is.