Trivia: M. Night Shyamalan Ghost-Wrote Which Teen Romantic Comedy?
The marketing for After Earth featured plenty of eye-popping scenes, but one of the most curious aspects of the campaign had to do with what the studio chose not to show: director M. Night Shyamalan's name. No doubt that was thanks to his declining cachet in the pop culture landscape. Fairly or not, he's gone from rising star to laughingstock over the past fifteen years.
But that wasn't Shyamalan's first time flying under the radar. Diehard fans may know that The Sixth Sense wasn't the only movie Shyamalan had out in 1999 — he had written the script for Stuart Little, which hit the same year. Even fewer probably realize that he was also behind one of the most popular teen romcoms of all time. Hit the jump to find out which one.
If you were an adolescent in the late '90s, I probably don't need to explain to you what that is. For the rest of you, though, suffice it to say it's the kind of movie in which Rachel Leigh Cook is considered so hideous that BMOC Freddie Prinze Jr. has to be dared (by future Skull / car thief Paul Walker!) to ask her to bring her to the prom. You can probably guess where it goes from there.
She's All That doesn't have much in common with the typical Shyamalan movie, unless you consider the revelation that Cook is actually quite pretty under her glasses to be a mind-blowing twist. But the revelation that Shyamalan was behind it all along — now, that's a shocker worthy of any of his directorial efforts.
Relive the trailer for She's All That below:
And what the heck, here's my favorite scene from the movie.