Written by: Susan Granger
http://www.susangranger.com

This contemporary version of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" stars America's newest teen queen Amanda Bynes ("What a Girl Wants"), who has won six Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and is currently ranked #99 on the Forbes annual "Celebrity 100."

Viola Hastings (Bynes)) is a Cornwall, Connecticut, prep school soccer star who is refused a chance to try out for the boys' squad when the girls' team is eliminated. Adding insult to injury, the primary chauvinist is her boyfriend Justin (Robert Hoffman). So Viola devises a plan. She'll pretend to be her twin brother Sebastian (James Kirk) and take his place at a rival school, Illyria Prep, while he's off exploring the music scene in London. As this competitive male alter ego, she gets a crush on Sebastian's hunky roommate Duke (Channing Tatum), who flips for lovely Olivia (Laura Ramsey), who is turned on by Sebastian. Complicating matters, there's also the real Sebastian's girl-friend (Alex Breckinridge). Follow? Never mind.

All of this gender-bending might be far more entertaining if Amanda Bynes had chopped off her long hair like Natalie Portman in "V for Vendetta." Instead, she wears a silly, shaggy, bowl-cut wig and flaunts her femininity. Forget about characterization or studying Felicity Huffman's masculine turn in "Transamerica." 

Instead of exploring the inherent comedic possibilities as they did with "10 Things I Hate About You" based on "The Taming of the Shrew" or even Amy Heckerling's adaptation of Jane Austen's "Emma" into "Clueless," screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, along with producer/story writer Ewan Leslie and director Andy Fickman, stick with superficial slapstick. And who decided that twentysomething looks teenage? Most of the cast looks far too old for prep school.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "She's the Man" is a wholesome, cutsey 5, turning out to be far more cheesy than it should.