Sydney White

Plot

Sydney White (Amanda Bynes) is the daughter of a plumber, Paul White (John Schneider). Her mother, a Kappa Sorority member, died when Sydney was still young. She sets off to attend college at SAU and pledge to her mother's once dignified sorority. There she meets Demetria Rosemead Hotchkiss (Crystal Hunt), known as Dinky, also an upcoming member of the Kappa Sorority, and the two quickly become friends. While on their way to their dorm, she meets Tyler Prince (Matt Long), the president of a popular fraternity, who is also the on-off boyfriend of the extremely tyrannical, manipulative, and most hated president of the student council and the head of the Kappa Sorority, Rachel Witchburn (Sara Paxton). Rachel checks out her university's website that ranks the "hottest" in the school several times a day, and is always number one on the list. Tyler meets Sydney and is immediately smitten, while Rachel watches from her window, with an immediate dislike towards Sydney. When she first meets Sydney she believes that she's not "Kappa material" and doesn't care that she's a legacy.

Since Sydney and Dinky's mothers were Kappas, they survived the rush and were accepted as legacies. However, they need to survive the pledging. Sydney's tomboyish upbringing proves to be an asset as she stands out among the other girls and manages to overcome the difficult initiation tasks. She also unintentionally inspires the other girls to innocently defy shallow things that Rachel teaches them. This unique personality gradually propels Sydney's popularity as seen on the university website. Rachel gets extremely jealous of her because of this. As one of the Kappa Sorority's traditional rituals, the freshmen need to find a date late at midnight. Sydney finds Lenny (Jack Carpenter), one of the seven dorks who live in a run-down house known as the Vortex. Sydney is then picked by Rachel to ditch her date, which ended in Lenny paying.

Sydney fails to become a member of Kappa when Rachel humiliates her in the pledge gala and lies that she has disobeyed the rules: lying about her background and cheating on a Kappa quiz. Sydney leaves that night in the rain, unintentionally sitting in front of the Vortex. She is welcomed by the seven dorks: Lenny, the one with high maintenance health; Terrence (Jeremy Howard), a genius and post-grad, despite the fact that he still attends classes; Jeremy (Adam Hendershott), who is very shy and only uses his puppet to talk; Gurkin (Danny Strong), a hot-tempered blogger; Spanky (Samm Levine), who has no experience with girls; George (Arnie Pantoja), the childlike freshman who still believes in Santa Claus and doesn't know how to tie a knot; and Embelakbo Akapaktumbe– also known as "Embele"– (Donté Bonner), a Nigerian interchange student who is highly intelligent but has Jet lag. The Vortex is coincidentally the target of Rachel's plan to open a luxury center that will benefit only the top Greek sororities and fraternities. She plans to subject it to a planned demolition, which is something Tyler is opposed to after he gets to know Sydney and her housemates better.

Sydney, together with the seven dorks, tries to bring Rachel down from her student council position by running Terrence for president. He is soon disqualified because he had already graduated six years prior, as revealed when Rachel humiliated the group at a party. Sydney replaces him as a presidential candidate and starts her campaign. Unlike Rachel's views that promote elitism and exclusivism based solely on popularity and appearances, something that everyone on campus dislikes about her, Sydney and the dorks believe in accepting diversity and equality. This earns Sydney respect from different cliques, and she gets the number one rank on the school's "hottest" website, which infuriates Rachel more than ever. The day before the debate and election, Rachel hires a hacker to destroy Sydney's files using a virus called 'The Poison Apple.' Sydney is then forced to stay up all night in the library doing her work on Gurkin's laptop. When Sydney finishes her work, she accidentally falls asleep and is almost disqualified for not showing up, but Tyler wakes her with a kiss just in time. After Rachel answers the question posed by Professor Carleton (Brian Patrick Clarke), Sydney's supporters arrive, led by a goth girl (Kierstin Koppel) whose group is devoted to Gurkin's blog and becomes his girlfriend. Sydney's speech defends the underrated people, including dorks, and concludes by stating that she herself is a dork. This incites a number of students to also admit dork status including Tyler, Jeremy, Spanky and Dinky. Sydney wins the debate and the election, becoming the new president, while Rachel is stripped of her Kappa sisterhood privileges by her sisters because of the years of cruelty she bestoded on both her Kappa sister's and the students at the University as well as lying and cheating during the election.

The film ends with Sydney's father and other construction workers fixing the Vortex. New relationships have formed as well -- Dinky and Lenny are now a couple (who bonded because of their sensitive digestive system), Spanky is finally getting some girls, the Goth girl and Gurkin are dating, and Sydney and Tyler are together. George has learned how to tie a knot, Jeremy is finally coming out of his shell, and Terrence has become a millionaire because of his theory (He sold his theory {the predictive analytic probability theory that he finally perfected and can predict anything from the behavior of amino acids in a stable isotope peptide bond to the outcome of sporting events} to ibet.com for $10 million). And, according to Sydney's narration, they all lived "dorkily ever after".

Production

Principal photography took place in and around Orlando from February 14, 2007 to April 4, 2007. Filming locations included the University of Central Florida, Rollins College, and University High School (Orlando).

Box office

Sydney White opened on September 21, 2007 in the United States in 2,104 venues. In its opening weekend, the film earned $5,196,380 in the box office, ranking sixth place and third of the week's new releases. At the end of its run, the film grossed $11,892,415 domestically and $1,727,660 overseas for a worldwide total of $13,620,075. Based on an estimated $16.5 million budget, the film was a box office bomb.

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews. As of September 21, 2007 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 37% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 75 reviews (a movie is considered "rotten" when it receives less than 60% positive reviews). Film critic Laura Kern of the New York Times said: "Ms. Bynes, with her cherubic face, expressive eyes and comic timing, helps create a positive, pleasing diversion that caters to the geek in all of us."

A top critic on Rotten Tomatoes stated: that the film "...should satisfy Bynes fans looking for a pleasant, innocuous follow-up to her last vehicle".

On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 44 out of 100, based on 19 reviews.

"Sydney White's message of embracing all kinds of people and not quaking in fear of the elite and popular is a sound one, but each twist and turn is so telegraphed and expected that the story feels wan and the comedy feeble." —Claudia Puig, USA Today