The best movie adaptation of the best script of all time

Rating: 8/10 (22 November 2019)

"She's the Man" is a ridiculous but ultimately entertaining teen movie which takes the gender-bending action of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and drops it in the middle of a modern-day American boarding school. I am not a big fan when plays are adapted into movies, because I feel that directors make unnecessary changes that transforms the original script real purpose. However, this time I must say that I am impressed. This movie is a modernized version of the play that focuses on a teen audience making the movie-watching experience only enhanced.
This movie is a unique, well written, very well performed comedy that still fulfills Shakespeare's original purpose. Both play and movie, have the same theme of love in which the main characters are connected in a love triangle. The clever ways in which names and locations are re-purposed is one big part of the "She's The Man" magic. Viola, Olivia, and Sebastian all have identical names and plots. My favourite scene in Twelfth Night is Act II, scene 4, this is when Orsino that in the movie is Tatum talks about his love life with Amanda/Sebastian and its imperfections, while she declares her feelings that she has for him. In this film, all main purposes from Shakespeare original script are kept the same but at the same time portrayed a bit differently. An example of this is the way how Amanda throws hints of her feelings toward Tatum while they were talking about how he was going to make Olivia falls for him. In the movie, when Taum asks why should Olivia falls for him Amanda genuinely responds that he is hot when shortly after she corrects herself. Whereas in Twelfth Night, Cesario tells Orsino about her love making up a story to convince him that women are true of heart and are able to love someone as much as he loves Olivia through a story of her imaginary sister that loved someone just like her. This doesn't affect Shakespeare's purpose since the only thing that changes is the way how the feelings were expressed in different contexts, but both ended up in the same effect. On She's the Man, this part is shown fast, concise and spontaneous way since it might be more common and relatable for our time along with the setting and costumes used by the actors.
Another part of the scene which I thought followed Shakespeare's original purpose is how the actors comedic sense of timing was impeccable. On Twelfth Night comedy is added by the song that was about love to adapt to Orsino's melancholic mood which expresses passion and obsession toward his love. This comedic song was added to the scene to lighten the mood and make the scene funnier. Although in She's the Man a song is not used, the appearance of a spider is used to make the audience laugh and relate to the scene by knowing that most people hate spiders and at the end adding the event that the day after will take place. Despite the change of props, this part of the scene does fulfill Shakespeare purpose which is to make this scene as comedic and realistic as possible and show how this affects the love triangle that the characters have between them.
This movie succeeds on almost every level, despite being different in many aspects, it still manages to keep the original purposes of Shakespeare. Not every movie lover likes it because it's too predictable, but it is great to appreciate its adaptation.