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Created Feb 05, 2014 09:45PM PST • Edited Jan 05, 2019 08:55PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Girl gets guy in Sydney White, an entirely winning collegiate comedy starring the entirely winsome Amanda Bynes as Sydney White. Focusing on a coed, partially set in a sorority, it provides a cheekily distaff view of campus life – on and off Greek Row.

   Indeed, Joe Nussbaum’s film catalogs countless collegiate groups and iconic settings: rush, Poli-Sci 201, tailgating, parties, pledges, dating, Student Council, and so on and so forth. So what if it occasionally droops down to movie-of-the-week level. It always pulls out of the dive to regain feature film altitude.

   Cute and sexy without ever being salacious, Sydney White even strikes pay-dirt with some heartwarming emotional surprises. That makes it a feel-good movie, even as it opens it up for hipster derision.

   The movie dates from ’07, just pre-iPhone, Facebook and Obama:

   • Hot or Not is big, often browsed on a color Blackberry
   • MySpace gets mentioned. Facebook doesn’t.
   • Sydney White was made one year before America elected The One. Go figure, a formulaic Hollywood comedy foreshadowed Barack Obama, the Sydney White of the Electoral College. Being bright, sparkly and inclusive can carry a candidate a long way in America, on-screen or off.

   Great first kiss, an hour and a half into an hour-forty movie. Talk about waiting till it’s right. Good thing, since it can’t be a great RomCom without a great first kiss. A character named Tyler Prince kneeling to plant a chivalrous kiss on a sleeping Sydney White easily qualifies.

   Nevermind many of the secondary characters being second rate and the Hey kids let’s put on a show! vibe. Funny is funny, smart is smart, inclusive is endearing: Sins are forgiven.

   Amanda Bynes is/was a joyful moviestar who gets to work against a great foil – tormentor really – in Sara Paxton’s consummate creation of coed cupidity, the evil yin to Bynes’ earnest yang. They are opposing angels in a collegiate fever dream. Who could ask for anything more?

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Amanda Bynes – just this side of drop dead gorgeous – is more importantly a comedienne of the first order. OK, Marilyn Monroe occupies the First Order all by herself. Bynes is in the second order, which is about as high as any comedienne who didn’t do an American President gets. Unfortunately, Bynes also shares with Monroe the status of Hollywood casualty. Fortunately it has yet to prove fatal to young Amanda. Who knows if she’ll ever make another movie, let alone recapture her fresh pluckiness. Here’s hoping!

   Sara Paxton is icely awesome as Collegiate Queen Bee: Sorority President and Student Council President on a campus where the Student Council has the administration cowed. It’s somewhat surprising that Paxton hasn’t broken out as a star of her own.

   Matt Long is plenty winsome as the Fraternity President they both desire. Put it this way, he’s a natural playing a character named Tyler Prince and much better looking than I was.

   Lots of very good supporters, though none of the young ones appeared ready to breakout as stars of their own. Indeed, in seven years, none has.

   • Crystal Hunt as Dinky, the Sorority Legacy
   • The Seven Dorks: Jack Carpenter, Jeremy Howard, Adam Hendershott, Danny Strong, Samm Levine, Arnie Pantoja, Donté Bonner
   • John Schneider as the Dad, a down to earth kind of guy. Great casting.
   • Brian Patrick Clarke as a cool Poli-Sci Prof
   • Kierstin Koppel as Goth Girl, every writer’s dream fan
   • Jo Beth Locklear as Flirty Girl
   • Tait Moline as Danny the Tranny. Gotta love that credit and role.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

   Amanda Bynes

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Joe Nussbaum’s film is formulaic, but winningly so. How formulaic? Per Wikipedia, it’s based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was originally titled Sydney White and the Seven Dorks.¹ Take that story architecture and drop it into a stereotyped college campus, and you’ve got an entirely formulaic film.

    Details make it great, especially the way it touches so many college touchstones, for instance placing one scene at the “Emily Steinburg Jewish Student Union – Southern Atlantic University”, whose 1939 officers included a Daniel Nussbaum, which also happens to be the name of Joe Nussbaum’s father. Nice touch.

    ¹ Wikipedia on Sydney White

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

    “Look at her with that pie. It’s a SO-rority not a HO-rority.”

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Stereotypical college settings are vividly imagined.

    20 stunt players

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.0

    The lightly risqué edginess includes refreshingly healthy sexuality. More entertainingly, the dialog is suggestive in a PG-13 kind of way. “Can I touch your hammer!?” asks the ingenue, that sort of thing.

17. Sex Titillating 2.3

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.5

    Surreal circumstantial and biological reality make this comedy starring a former Nickelodeon star surreal overall. Fun. Some of us who lived the Greek life like it especially well.

    I wasn’t as handsome as Matt Long’s fraternity president when – like him – I headed up the most successful house on campus. Nor did I serenade a sorority sister in the library. Making it pledge-aided – nice touch. The Greek tropes are pleasantly reminiscent nonetheless: Brother-Sister Houses, pledges pledging, parties, better parties. It may be shallow ambition, but who could ask for anything more?

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Surreal 2.8

24. Physical Glib 1.6