DVD Review: Sydney WhiteFails As Fairy Tale Update

By Kaylie Brannan
December 2, 2008

"Target cute pledges.  Avoid fat losers," chant Southern Atlantic University's Kappa Phi Nu sorority sisters before pledges arrive during rush week in the movie Sydney White (2007).  This is just one tree in a never-ending forest of eye-rolling lines in the movie's 108 minutes of misery. 

Instead of remotely adhering to the original Snow White storyline, writer Chad Gomez Creasey throws both the storyline and characters to the wind while presenting viewers with a ridiculously cheap look at the stereotypical college campus through the eyes of Sydney White (Amanda Bynes), a motherless female freshman. 

In typical college-movie fashion (think Van Wilder, Revenge of the Nerds or Animal House), it's a cruel world for non-Greeks like Sydney who must find a way to fit in on campus (and, for her, into a frat boy's heart).  As you can guess, the movie is replete with red Solo cups, keg stands, MySpace references and the like. 

It's not surprising when Sydney is labeled a misfit and banished after not being inducted into the sorority house.  What is surprising, though, is the way every girl in this movie is portrayed, including her. 

There's Rachel Witchburn (Sara Paxton), the Paris Hilton-esque drama queen mirror of Rachel McAdam's character Regina George: evil it-girl in the 2004 film Mean Girls.  There's also Dinky (Crystal Hunt), the big-haired, sweet-as-southern-tea (complete with accent) addition to Kappa Phi Nu. 

Most of the female undergrads are depicted as thick-skulled, scantily clad party girls with an agenda devoted to sorority functions and shopping sprees.  This would be fine since if it fit the mold of most college girls, except ... it's completely inaccurate, and terribly offensive. 

The only chuckle of relief comes when Sydney dons a conservative black skirt suit before a date with Prince Charming (Matt Long) and one of the seven dwar... er, dorks tells her she looks like Barbara Walters.

But it's not just the ladies who get the stereotype overload; the gentlemen don't get a break either.  The seven dorks Sydney finds herself living with in "the Vortex" (the shamble losers' home on the end of Greek Row) are the real typecasts. 

Between the Friday night fantasy video game reenactments (nearly six seconds of hilarity) and the pathetically schoolboy scene where the guys "ooh" and "ahh" over Sydney's sports bra hanging to dry from an exposed living room pipe, the geeks never get a break.  And why should they?  That's the stereotype, right?  Ugh. 

But wait -Prince Charming serenades his true love in the campus library, drives a red antique Mustang and takes his date to a soup kitchen on their first date.  Does it get any better?

Quite frankly, no.  It's only in the last 45 minutes or so that the Snow White storyline comes through at all, and that's really only because the cast used lines directly referencing it.  The music steadily worsens as time goes on (think Phil Collins at cheesy prom - awkward teens, clothes, hair and all). 

The final scene is, hands down, the worst.  The school performs some sort of cultural parade that looks more like a collegiate freak show.  This somehow prompts the popular students in the on-screen audience to reveal their dorky sides - and awfully unconvincing ones at that. 

It's really just one of the blogging Vortex geeks that get a viewer's fist pump of support when he shows his comical, but genuine dork side when he says, "Does anyone have another word for douchebaggery?  I don't want to use it a third time." 

Girls and boys, if you're looking for a Disney-fashioned film to teach you that true beauty is within and indestructible, this is the absolute wrong film for you.  If you're looking for a movie that might teach you about pop culture's collegiate stereotypes, boy, is there a film for you.  The only catch?  It's pretty much a rotten apple.