10 Things I Hate About You
Morgan

Review by Morgan

10 Things I Hate About You 1999

★★★½

Watched 16 Apr 2016

For me this has always been one of those films that, no matter how many people assure me No, really, it's better than you have any reason to believe, I just could not commit to watching it because it seemed so fundamentally broken on paper.

But no, it really is as above-par as you've probably heard from somebody in your life before. The direction is as perfectly flat and pedestrian as any teen movie you could name, but Ledger of course was a miracle, and he brings out better work in Stiles than she usually demonstrates elsewhere. And if the film is so hellbent on privileging the script and only the script, at least that script is a marvel: great thought and care has been applied to retaining the essential nature of Taming of the Shrew, without ever letting it stray into the horrifying territory that a play with those values in the context of contemporary teenage girls could so easily go (in the A-plot at least; the Joseph Gordon-Levitt driven B-plot has some shitty Nice Guy overtones).

Better yet, deciding that balance of literate and humane was the bare minimum rather than the endpoint, writers Karen McCullah & Kirsten Smith inject the film with a healthy dose of frank sexuality, which goes wonders combined with the film's generosity towards all of its characters, even the ones most clearly outlined as Obstacles by the narrative. There's not really a shred of 90s postmodern snark to be found in the movie, and that above all is what I think cements its place as a solid and enduring teen picture, if not any kind of a landmark one.

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