Culture

In A Surprise To No One, Matthew Lillard Is The Best Part Of Netflix’s ‘He’s All That’

Honestly, Matthew Lillard's cameo makes the whole reboot worth it.

by Michelle Rennex  1 September 2021
Matthew Lillard He's All That Reboot Netflix

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Alright, I’m just going to say it. The Netflix She’s All That reboot, aptly titled He’s All That, is not that bad.

— Warning: Spoilers ahead, but if you’ve watched She’s All That before nothing is going to be that big of a shock. —

Despite fears that Addison Rae’s first foray into acting would be a total flop, the TikTok star actually did a decent job. While the film itself isn’t exactly anything to write home about, it was still better than whatever The Kissing Booth 3 was. And what were we are really expecting? It’s a cheesy, modern-day teen rom-com that’s based on a cheesy ’90s teen rom-com, so it was never going to be that good anyway. But, for what it was, it was pretty good.

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In her first acting role, Rae plays Padgett Sawyer, an influencer who goes through a very embarrassing and very public breakup with her boyfriend, Jordan. To fix her image, Padgett agrees to give the school’s biggest loser, Cameron Kweller, a makeover in a bet with her “best friend”, Alden.

While the bet is meant to just be a bit of fun, Padgett uses the opportunity to try and win back her main sponsor Jessica Miles Torres, the owner of Bunny Venom. For reasons I still don’t quite understand, Jessica is played by Kourtney Kardashian, who expresses the same amount of emotion as a literal rock.

Anyway, Padgett is desperate to fix her damaged brand because she’s terribly hiding the secret that she’s “poor”, aka comfortably middle class, from her super-rich friends, and she needs that sponsorship money to fund her college tuition.

Just like in She’s All That, the girl falls in love with the boy, the obviously hot ~ugly loser~ finds out they were just a bet, the couple fight, there’s a prom dance battle break, then they kiss and make up. It’s all pretty basic stuff, nothing too amazing and nothing horribly terrible either.

But there was one standout performance in the film, and that was the cameo of everyone’s fave, Matthew Lillard, as Cali High School’s daggy Principal Bosch.

As He’s All That is a gender-swapped tribute to the original, there are a number of cheeky easter eggs thrown into the remake for fans.

For example, Rachael Leigh Cook, who was Laney in She’s All That, plays Padgett’s mother in the reboot. The chaotic dance battle scene features in both films, as does the iconic “fucking bet” line. And a remix of ‘Kiss Me’ even plays in the reboot as a nod to the moment when Laney walked out in her red dress.

So it’s a nice surprise that Matthew Lillard also popped up in the remake to whip out some of Brock’s iconic dance moves from the 1999 original — especially since Lillard told Entertainment Tonight that he didn’t think “it was a good idea at all” to reboot She’s All That back in 2019.

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Now, yes Lillard literally has about three minutes of total screen time, and really only appears at the end of the film to crown the Prom King and Queen for the year before breaking out into his little dancey dance. But Lillard told Coming Soon that the scene, while fun, was “painful” because he’s “very old and rickety around the joint area” and it actually took “a lot and a lot of takes” to get right.

But painful or not, everyone agrees that those few minutes that Lillard features in are quite literally the best part of He’s All That. 

Three cheers for the icon that is Matthew Lillard!

He’s All That and She’s All That are streaming on Netflix now.