By Curt Schleier

SYDNEY WHITE is part ELECTION, part REVENGE OF THE NERDS and part SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS.  It is a movie that shouldn’t work, but does.  The temptation is to say it succeeds despite itself, but that’s wrong.

It works because screenwriter Chad Gomez Creasey turned a clichéd idea inside out and made it funny.

It works because director Joe Nussbaum’s minimalist direction moves the plot so fast you don’t notice inconsistencies.

It works because top to bottom the actors are perfectly cast.

But most of all, it works because of Amanda Bynes, who brings alive the title character and makes you believe that beauty and brains are not mutually exclusive.  Now if we can just keep her away from the Lohan-Spears-Hilton crowd, we have the makings of a giant superstar. 

Sydney White was brought up by her widowed father and hung around the construction sites where he worked as a plumber.  She goes off to Southern Atlantic University and pledges Kappa Phi Nu, not because she’s an airhead.  Rather, that was her mother’s sorority, and she feels if she joins that sorority it will bring her closer to her mom.  But she’s the anti-sorority girl, level-headed, unconcerned about artifice, prepared to judge everyone by their actions, not their appearance or finances.

So clearly there’s trouble ahead.  To make things worse, on her first day on campus Sydney attracts the attention of frat boy Tyler Prince (Matt Long).  This is not a good thing, because he’s the former boy friend of Rachel Witchburn (Sara Paxton), who is the president of Kappa Phi and the student government association and the most powerful person on campus.  And she wants Tyler back and intends to have him and step on anyone in her way.


First she tries to bar Sydney from pledging, but Sydney is a legacy – that means she must be allowed to pledge.  Then she makes Sydney’s life difficult in the way only a pretentious bitch can, and though she’s passed every test, ultimately wields her power to keep her out of the sorority – and the sorority house.

By this time, it’s too late to get alternate campus housing, so she’s forced to move into the ramshackle Vortex, a house so named because it attracts nerds.  There are seven other residents; hence you get Sydney White and the Seven Dorks. 

Apparently the campus is ruled by the Greeks, so Sydney decides to fight back by running for office along with her new roommates.  Their platform: unite all the disenfranchised on campus.  She’s helped by Tyler, who, quite frankly is as cute as she is (I don’t mean that in a BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN way; I mean it in a critic making a comment way.)


Would it spoil the ending for you if I told you Sydney and the dorks sweep the election and it’s a happy ending for everyone – except Rachel.  And there’s nothing wrong with happy endings.