Note to students assigned to read William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night": You cannot watch "She's the Man" and think the Amanda Bynes gender-bender adheres closely to the source material.

		"She's the Man" Rating: PG-13 for some sexual material. Starring: Amanda Bynes. Director: Andy Fickman. Post-Gazette Family Film Guide review of "She's the Man" "She's the Man" Web site

The Bard's bones are there, but he never incorporated girls' soccer or a scene where someone appears to flash her breasts, shot with the discretion required by a PG-13 rating. But not the wisdom.

Tween and teen favorite Bynes stars as Viola Hastings, an athlete who is devastated when her school disbands her soccer team (due to, improbably, a lack of players) and won't allow the girls to play on the boys' squad.

Instead of going the all-American route -- lawsuit and TV press conference -- she decides to impersonate her twin brother, Sebastian, and show up at his new boarding school. That way, she can make the boys' soccer team and beat her old school. Sebastian secretly has left for London to play with his band and their parents are divorced and, therefore, clueless about their whereabouts. Only in the movies, right?

To masquerade as Sebastian, Viola tucks her long hair under a mop-top wig, glues on fake eyebrows and sideburns, binds her chest and makes sure to shower in private.

As in "Twelfth Night," romantic complications ensue when Viola finds herself falling for her roomie, Duke (Channing Tatum), who has a crush on the suddenly single Olivia (Laura Ramsey). Viola's Junior League mother (Julie Hagerty) expects her daughter to turn debutante, and Sebastian's high-maintenance girlfriend, unaware he is overseas, raises a ruckus, too.

Bynes never really looks like a boy of her age; she's too smooth-skinned and baby-faced. To disguise her voice, she both lowers it and adopts a weird accent. Still, to her credit, she hasn't turned into what one Oscar party writer called the "scary skinny girls," and she is playing a teen whose passion is soccer and not the prom.

"She's the Man" is about 10 or 15 minutes too long, descends into silliness before the end (including a catfight in the women's restroom) and doesn't exactly open a new window on boy-girl relationships. But it manages to celebrate a character who can be tomboy, faux boy and girlie girl, all in the same movie.