10 Things I Hate About You
I’m trying to remember the most recent movie I saw that didn’t end with a prom at high school. Maybe it was “Ravenous.” The next film I watched, “Never Been Kissed,” also ends in a prom. Nowadays, the romantic stories related to high school have become so popular that they are running out of ideas and they have resorted back to recycling classic literature.
My colleague James Berardinelli recently listed these films: based on Emma was “Clueless,’’ inspired by “Pygmalion” was “She’s All That,” while “Les Liaisons Dangerousness” came from ‘‘Cruel Intentions’’ (prompting Stanley Kauffmann to observe that it was better back in the days when high school students were allowed to take over city government for a day, instead of remaking French novels).
We could also add 1998’s film adaptation of “Great Expectations“, Cinderella’s real story in Ever After and Romeo-Juliet which anything but. There is even “The Rage: Carrie 2” which is a remake of one of my favorite works such as Shaw, Austen or Shakespeare’s “Carrie.”
“10 Things I Hate About You” loosely owes its inspiration from Shakespeare’s play called “The Taming of the Shrew”, just as Starship Troopers was influenced by Titus Andronicus. It does not rework Shakespeare so much as evoke him like an amulet through setting this story at Padua High School and naming its characters Stratford and Verona making one of the heroines a shrew etc. There is also one scene where the shrew is tasked with rewriting a Shakespeare sonnet.
Still geez!, the movie is fascinating even though it has grown tiredly creaky with ancient repackaged plot (a boy takes money to ask a girl out for prom then finds he really enjoys her, but she discovers this bribe and hates him). The last time I saw that idea was in “She’s All That” almost two months ago (boy bet he could make the dorkiest girl the prom queen, and he did, but by then he fell for her, etc.).
The story this time involves two Seattle sisters. Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik) is popular and dresses in red often. Her older sister Katarina (Julia Stiles) is a shrew who never dates anyone and is very intelligent. When asked about a novel by Hemingway by their English teacher she whispers to the class, “Hemingway was an alcoholic who hung around Picasso hoping to nail his leftovers.”
There are two men who want to go with Bianca on prom night: one of them is shy and likeable; while the other one is a loud-mouthed person. Nevertheless, Kat’s father (Larry Miller) has forbidden her from dating before Kat begins dating. Thus they scheme to have Patrick (Heath Ledger), the school rebel take her out for prom. After receiving $300 as payment, it dawned on him that Kat was really pretty after all among others things so finally he falls in love with her again whereupon.
The whole plot is one thing that I am suggesting we throw out and look at the performances as well as some of the more amusing scenes. I really liked the spirit of high school teachers. Allison Janney plays a sex-crazed counselor, and Daryl “Chill” Mitchell is an English teacher who could recite Shakespeare’s sonnets like rap lyrics.
(I can tell you that they actually do work pretty well as rap and I’m expecting the album any day now.) Moreover, Ledger and Stiles also created a cute kind of tension between them. He has this one scene that pretty much stops everything in its tracks for a minute or two. To get her to like him back, he waits for her on the field during sports practice and then sings “I love you baby,” over the loudspeakers while bribing his high school’s marching band into playing along with him. Almost worth the price of admission are those scenes. However, some other scenes are positively boring.
There must be at least one part in all teen films where they hold a long boring party with everyone dressed crazy drunk, and just overly bright (notably some kids come as village people). Such parties always involve scuffling, vomiting, and crying in front of everybody because of a broken heart. That scene bored me up as did another one in which lovers threw paint balloons at each other. It is true there should be a scene about careless frolicsomeness but watching them rubbing paint into each other’s hair made me wish for something traditional like obligatory Tilt a Whirl ride.
Some things about it were good its high spirits. The music most notably by Letters to Cleo founded band is quite subdued yet very imaginative. The story seems trapped by conventionality almost entirely; nevertheless it does not pull off breakaway liftoff. This charming acting sometimes goes awry because it makes the characters so lively and engaging that we can’t help but feel they are caught in the plot.
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