Movie review: 'Sydney White'

Though her vehicles target the young-teen-girl demographic, I’ve enjoyed her turns as a free-spirit American girl at odds with stuffy Brits (“What a Girl Wants”) and gender-bending soccer star (“She’s the Man”). She was fine as Penny Pingleton in “Hairspray.” But the fractured fairy tale “Sydney White” pushes the limits of Ms. Bynes’ aw-shucks charms.

Sydney (Bynes) follows in Snow White’s tracks (deceased mom, evil-though-beautiful nemesis, seven companions short of social skills if not of stature and a domicile that needs a lot of cleaning). Conflict arises when Sydney exercises her personality, honed in the all-male world of her plumber father (“Smallville’s” John Schneider), while pledging her late mother’s sorority, a sisterhood that now quakes under the iron fist of the “fairest of them all,” Rachel (Sara Paxton of “Aquamarine”).

That fairest part, now defined as “hot,” is tracked on a Facebook-style online barometer, and Syd challenges Rachel for the top spot there as well as for the attentions of frat-boy dreamboat Tyler Prince (Matt Long). Through Panhellenic malfeasance, Sydney ends up living in a hovel called the Vortex, hard by Greek Row, with seven guys unlikely to have been admitted to any institution of higher learning. Standouts among the dorks include hypochondriac Lenny (Jack Carpenter) and Web genius Gurkin (Danny Strong, adding to the nerd cred he banked as Jonathan on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”).

The film aspires to uplift, but its messages are mixed. It’s not enough that the handsome guy is attracted to the cute and upstanding Sydney rather than the gorgeous but cruel Rachel; the whole online-voting campus must acknowledge Sydney’s superiority as well. And as anti-fashion as our heroine is, she appears to be the only coed with a constant spray-on tan and ever-present white eye shadow. Even the climax, a celebration of diversity, feels more like mockery than celebration of the outsiders (Hasidic Jews, Pacific Islanders) with whom Syd bonds. It touches all the bases of its source material—an apple, a rousing kiss and even “Hi Ho” (the bright spot of the movie)—but little feels newly envisioned, original.

Director Joe Nussbaum (“Sleepover”) doesn’t do much with his cast; there’s a lot of standing around as he indulges Bynes’ tendency to mug. Maybe there was only so much he could do; “Sydney White,” according to its producers, is a sequel to Hilary Duff’s “A Cinderella Story,” and it shares with that 2004 film the vacuum-like ability to suck the fun out of a fairy tale.

mhart@tribune.com