10 Films Substantially Different From Their Source Material
9. She's the Man
This romantic sports comedy teen film (what a combo of genres) She's the Man is actually based on Shakespeare, if you would believe it. Yes, stunningly this Amanda Bynes vehicle is in fact a very loose retelling of the Bard's Twelfth Night.
The film sees Bynes' Illyria undergo a makeover to take the place of her brother Sebastien at an elite boarding school, where she plans to play for the soccer team and exact some on-field revenge against her old team for cutting the female squad. It does not take a scholar to point out that we are a far cry from Elizabethan theatre here.
Suffice to say, Shakespeare's original is not a romantic sports comedy teen film, with only comedy fittingly describing his 1602 play. In tackling such material, She's the Man joins that peculiar rank of films seemingly committed to shoving the bare bones of a Shakespeare plot into whatever modern genre fusion which can be mustered. Unsurprisingly, She's the Man hasn't fared well critically, with a 43% rating on Metacritic. Had they stuck a touch more closely to the original, perhaps all would have been sweeter, but who's to say?