The snappy, quick-on-the-uptake Amanda Bynes of "She's the Man" is missing in the comedy "Sydney White" (H1/₂), a college updating of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Sydney is a girl raised "by construction workers," she says in her opening narration. Her widowed dad (John Schneider) did the best he could. But she's wholly unprepared to go to Southern Atlantic University and pledge with the Kappas, her late mother's beloved sorority.

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'Sydney White'

• Starring: Amanda Bynes, John Schneider
• Director: Joe Nussbaum
• Rating: PG-13 for some language, sexual humor and partying.
• Web site: myspace.com/sydneywhite

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Sydney rubs the elitist, rich Rachel (Sara Paxton of "Aquamarine") the wrong way in every way. Rachel is the "fairest of them all," according to the daily "who's hot" campus Web site. Sydney, meanwhile, casts her lot with "the seven dorks."

These guy are a motley but amusing collection of stereotypes, with Danny Strong, Samm Levine and Jeremy Howard the standout dorks. Also funny is Crystal Hunt as a very Southern, too-perky sorority princess.

You can guess the plot. Sydney leads a populist insurrection against the wealthy minority elite who are sucking up all the resources and power at SAU.

Director Joe Nussbaum does only a middling job of moving things along, and, in writer Chad Creasey's script, the odd Snow White reference is what passes for clever. Bynes, a gifted comedienne, isn't given many moments to shine and doesn't create her own.