She Gets What She Wants (AKA Slap Here, She's French!) DVD Review:

Straggling behind the wake of popular teen films that seemed to have taken over the cinemas for a short while, She Gets What She Wants is entertaining, if not unoriginal and only slightly humorous. Somewhere within the ninety-seven minute film the point of the whole thing, including a reason for watching it, seems lost. If mindless entertainment without cause or reason doesn’t bother you in the slightest, She Gets What She Wants may prove to be the perfect Saturday night rental.

In order to win a beef beauty pageant, in a small Texas town, the most popular girl in school, Starla, agrees to take in a foreign exchange student. When the French exchange student Genevieve arrives, she seems like a meek and innocent young girl at first, but quickly begins to do all that she can to subtly destroy and take Starla’s life. Starla tries to tell everyone, but everything she tries to do in order to fix the situation, only seems to make it worse in this frustrating comedy of errors.

Although the acting in this film is on par with many of the other teen comedies, the script falls short in more than one aspect. The plot quickly gets out of control and unbelievable before much time has been invested in setting the story up. Another huge problem is that none of the characters are savory enough o care about for most of the film. They all have agendas and are difficult to relate to or cheer for either. Because the characters are un-relatable, there are really no stakes in watching the film.

Still, there are some genuinely humorous moments within the ridiculousness of the film, but it is unfortunate that the humor falls short of making the film worth seeing. If more emphasis had been placed on making the film as ridiculous as possible, it could have worked better than staying somewhere in between reality and comedic insanity.

The DVD is about as well produced as the film. It isn’t bad enough to notice all of the flaws, but just does enough to get by without being noticed. The film may be more fun for younger audiences who won’t be able to spot the unoriginal flaws, but most educated viewers should stay away.



Ryan Izay