“Sydney White” is an Amanda Bynes comedy that shows the after-effects a long-running TV sitcom can have on an actress.
The snappy, quick-on-the-uptake Bynes of “She’s the Man” is missing in this college updating of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Some of that is editing, and a lot of that is script. After all, she was funny enough in a supporting role in this summer’s “Hairspray.” But her Sydney is a low-wattage star performance in a movie that sorely needs the perky Bynes of a pre- “What I Like About You” live “studio audience” plus laugh-track. She’s just off.
Sydney is a girl raised “by construction workers,” she says in her opening narration. Her widowed dad (John Schneider) did the best he could. But she’s wholly unprepared to go to Southern Atlantic University and pledge with the Kappas, her late mother’s beloved sorority.
Sydney is cute but fashion-impaired, and utterly unable to stop babbling when a cute frat boy, Tyler Prince (Matt Long), strikes up a conversation. And she’s entirely too nice and open and honest to manage in the venomous realm of Greek queen Rachel Witchburn (Sara Paxton of “Aquamarine”).
Sydney isn’t very good at the midnight “date dash” (finding a date in 15 minutes in the middle of the night) or the “date dash ditch.” She rubs the elitist, rich Rachel the wrong way in every way.
Rachel is the “fairest of them all,” according to the daily “who’s hot” campus website. She rules the roost and makes sure that this campus is Greek-owned-and-operated. Sororities and fraternities get all the activities money, make the rules and set the agenda for the campus.
That agenda? Be pretty and blond and “we’re all size 2,” if you’re a girl.
Sydney casts her lot with “the seven dorks.” These guys, living in a rundown house called “the Vortex,” are a motley but amusing collection of stereotypes – the ladies’ man with no ladies experience, the allergic-to-everything nerd, the video-games anarchist, the science dweeb, the not-grown-up-yet Scout, the always-sleeping foreign exchange student and the shy goof who wears a doggy sock puppet – everywhere.
You can guess the plot. Sydney leads a populist insurrection against the wealthy minority elite who are sucking up all the resources and power at SAU.
Director Joe Nussbaum does only a middling job of moving things along – the film could lose 15 minutes and seem snappier. Writer Chad Creasey has a few other writing deals in a similar vein lined up after this. Let’s hope he gets help. The odd Snow White reference (a poison “Apple” computer gag, a kiss from a handsome “Prince,” and a moment when the dorks walk by the “witch” and mutter “Hi, Ho” to her) is what passes for clever here.
“Sydney White” | * 1/2 RATING
PG-13 for some language, sexual humor and partying | 1 hour, 46 minutes | COMEDY | Directed by Joe Nussbaum; written by Chad Creasey; photography by Marl Irwin starring Amanda Bynes, Matt Long, Sara Paxton, John Schneider | Opens today at area theaters.
