Review: 10 Things I Hate About You

Overprotective father Larry Miller thinks he’s found the perfect way to make sure his pretty and popular teenage daughter Larisa Oleynik will never date boys: She can go on a date…when her sister Julia Stiles does. The problem? Stiles is super-serious, sarcastic, cynical and frankly anti-social. And she has absolutely, positively no interest in dating. Enter young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has a crush on Oleynik, and along with his equally nerdy buddy David Krumholtz devise a plan to get Stiles a boyfriend. Their candidate? Rebellious, chain-smoking thug with an air of vague criminality about him, Heath Ledger. He agrees to the plan, reluctantly at first. $100 a day certainly helps, though. For Stiles it’s loathe at first sight, so Ledger has a helluva task at hand if he’s going to woo her. Andrew Keegan plays the jerky teen male model (!) Oleynik is interested in, Gabrielle Union is one of Oleynik’s stuck-up friends, whilst David Leisure, Daryl ‘Chill’ Mitchell, and Alison Janney play school faculty members.

 

In the late 90s and early 00s, so far as teen flicks with a comedic bent go, there was “American Pie”, this 1999 Gil Junger (the TV movie “Christmas Bounty” with The Miz) romantic-comedy, and…mostly a bunch of shit. So when I tell you that this modern reworking of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” is a pretty easy watch, just bear in mind that it’s still not great. I mean, being better than the likes of “She’s All That”, the grammatically infuriating “Can’t Hardly Wait”, and (who the fuck even remembers) “Loser” isn’t terribly high praise. It’s also better than most modern reworkings of Shakespeare, and once again I need to qualify that by mentioning Baz Luhrmann’s highly uneven “Romeo + Juliet” and the godawful boofhead Aussie modern take on “Macbeth”. So this is…nice. It’s a bit of fun. That’s OK, though. There’s nothing wrong with nice and fun.

 

The best thing, perhaps, is that being completely modernised in language, none of the actors have to struggle with the text the way several performers in the Luhrmann “Romeo + Juliet” did. I like Shakespeare just fine, but I’m not overly keen on the language being used in a modern setting, and it’s an absolute disaster when spoken by people who don’t understand it. The casting is mostly on point here, and the best thing about the film. It seemed like Julia Stiles’ career was set to take off around this point, but it never quite happened the way I figured it was going to. I honestly don’t know why, and she’s absolutely pitch-perfect in casting and performance here as the ‘shrew’ (who is really just a normal girl uninterested in popularity or other vapid high school matters). Larisa Oleynik is cute as a button as Stiles’ sister, which helps soften her rather bitchy, popular girl character. Stiles’ character is relatable, but she’s not meant to be soft as such, as dictated by the script she simply learns to lighten up a tad. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and especially David Krumholtz are easy to take to as the two geeky guys, and Andrew Keegan is a perfectly believable jerk. As for rising Aussie talent Heath Ledger, he gave better performances before and after this, but he certainly has chemistry with Stiles, which is perhaps enough.

 

The scene-stealers, however, are the adult actors. The always wonderful Alison Janney is awesome here as a guidance counsellor named Ms. Perky, who spends most of her time writing saucy romance novels. Daryl ‘Chill’ Mitchell (whose life took a pretty tragic turn in a 2001 motorcycle accident that left him disabled) might’ve stolen the entire film if he were in it more. Playing a fed-up, no-BS teacher he’s absolutely hilarious and deserved his own sitcom (someone else here got one instead). The ultimate stealer of the film, though, is Larry Miller. Playing the over-protective father (which he’d later reprise for the TV sitcom version) of Stiles and Oleynik, he’s absolutely brilliant. I should also mention a second Aussie connection beyond Ledger, with Spiderbait on the film’s soundtrack. Don’t worry, it’s one of their two good songs, “Calypso” (the other good one? “Buy Me a Pony”. Love that song).

 

One thing I really liked about the film is that, although Heath Ledger gained the most notice for the film and it appears to have a larger female than male fan base, it pretty much has enough here to please both genders, if you ask me. The film, scripted by two women- Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (the writing team behind “Legally Blonde” and “The Ugly Truth”)- is pretty equally about the Stiles and Gordon-Levitt characters, just about. The main problem with the film is that the comedy really only comes in fits and starts, mainly because the majority of it comes from the adult supporting cast. So it’s not a consistent gut-buster. Also, the film is too short, leaving Susan May Pratt with a tiny role (as seemingly one of Stiles’ only friends) that seems for sure to have been cut down considerably through script revisions, and the finale is certainly too rushed.

 

An effective, if lightweight modern take on Shakespeare (with a little “Can’t Buy Me Love” thrown in) that benefits from a terrific cast, including several scene-stealers and a spot-on Julia Stiles essentially in the lead. Others in the cast steal it from her, but the whole thing would fail without her. It’s nice. You’ll like it. What else is there to say?

 

Rating: B-