MovieChat Forums > All That (1994) Discussion > Amanda Bynes Overrated

Amanda Bynes Overrated

posted 13 years ago by osaji922
6 replies | jump to latest

I may be the only one to think this but I remember watching All That back in the day and I never liked Amanda Bynes' sketches then and I don't like them now. I am surprised there's a good number of people that like her because I honestly think the addition of her to the cast was the decline of All That where they would get these young stars that can't act and add them to the cast. Not only that but when they added her, they got rid of Katrina Johnson who I found really funny back then and still do. Shame she only lasted for 3 seasons.If it wasn't for them trying to do the whole cute one of the group crap which I never understood, Katrina could have went on for several more seasons because she was still funny and was also the youngest one of the original cast.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] osaji922 13 years ago

Personal problems? What's wrong with her?

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] osaji922 13 years ago

I didn't know about all of that but she hasn't done anything in years. I would have thought she already did retire.

[–] TMC-4 (20491) 6 years ago

Whatever Happened to Amanda Bynes?

https://lebeauleblog.com/2017/09/23/whatever-happened-to-amanda-bynes/

In this show, she moved away from the goofy, over the top characters she played on All That and The Amanda Show and played more of an average teenage girl who was a little quirky and klutzy. She’d end up playing this character in her movies. Over and over again.

And most of the movies she starred in (Big Fat Liar, What a Girl Wants, Lovewrecked, She’s the Man, and Sydney White) got mixed to negative reviews and were only modestly successful at the box office (except for Sydney White, which bombed but the reviews were more or less the same).

Considering her movies were considered “meh” by both audiences over the age of 13 and critics, as a movie star, she didn’t really stick out from the Hilary Duffs of the world and her movie star career was cut short.

Problem is, she grew up playing larger than life crazy characters yet she was always cast as the average, relatable teen when she was seemingly more suited to playing crazy characters than she was normal characters. Need proof? In one of the movies she made that was successful and did make an impression was Easy A, where she basically played a crazy Christian stereotype (granted, she wasn’t really the reason most people were seeing the movie but still…).

It seems like movie executives were trying to make her the next Hilary Duff or the next Lindsay Lohan when she wasn’t really like that. It didn’t really help that she was given roles that were rather forgettable and generic.
But what else hurt her career is that she was stuck in being in stuff made for the preteen demographic for over 10 years. From 1996-2007, she was basically in movies and TV shows aimed at the Nickelodeon demographic, even when she left Nickelodeon, as she was doing movies set at the preteen demographic from 2003-2007 and had done shows aimed at a similar demographic from 1996-2006.

[–] TMC-4 (20491) 5 years ago

Was Amanda really that despised by fans at the time? I don't want to say that due to her personal issues in recent years, that we shouldn't kick a woman while she's down. But in the context of All That, if I were to guess, I think that there are people out there who saw Amanda Bynes as kind of a "creator's pet". Dan Schneider (given all of the rumors and innuendo about him online) was sort of the kids TV version of Harvey Weinstein. He would latch on to a particular young female performer (Amanda, Jamie Lynn Spears, Miranda Cosgrove, Victoria Justice, Ariana Grande, Jennette McCurdy), who may have made an impression among the ensemble of a prior Nick show, and then proceeds to build an entire show around them.

Also, Amanda was sort of the first "precocious", overly trained, eager to please type of child actor (basically the type that you may find on the modern day Disney Channel and their sitcoms) to show up. Something like that hat really wasn't seen in the first few years of All That. She as you said, pushed Katrina Johnson aside as the resident "kid sister"/cute little girl of the cast. But Katrina to the best of my recollection wasn't exactly that type of "precocious" child actor that Amanda was. I mean, I couldn't imagine a child actress like Amanda Bynes do surprisingly mature impressions like Katrina's Ross Perot character.