1999 - 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, a cult teenage rom-com

I'm a little to old for this film and I was definitely not the intended audience.   The film was marketed under the Touchstone production banner which was the Disney's studio's way of separating their so called wholesome family films from some films of what they felt were more adult in nature. As if this harmless film was  some kind of a version of Last Tango In Paris.

This film was  inspired by Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew.  But to put it carefully it is very loosely inspired  by that Shakespeare play.  Julia Stiles is the mean older sister to Larisa Oleynik.  Oleynik can't go on dates unless her older sister dates per their traditionalist father, a rather ridiculous premise for a film set in the 1990's.    Joseph Gordon Levitt in one of his early roles,  persuades bad boy Heath Ledger to romance Stiles and since this is a rom-com surprise surprise they fall in love.

What this film has going for it is the casting, we get a lot of young actors at the start of their careers and you can definitely see their talent shine though. Unfortunately the actors all speak like they have rom-com writers following them around because they sure don't talk like high school students.  Certainly not any high school students I hung around with.  It's a tribute to these actors that they make these constant smarmy one-liners seem sincere.

I can't say that this film isn't fun because it is.  What the film has going for it is the performance of Julia Stiles as the shrewish older sister.  At the beginning of the film she comes off as a major bitch but as the story progresses her character grows and the audience comes to understand why she behaves the way she does.  It seems that Stiles should have really been a bigger star on the basis of this film but that's the way it goes.  Stiles carved out an okay career for herself for the most part but doesn't appear to be obsessed with all the Hollywood star ego bullshit.

 

The film was written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith, the running time is 97 minutes.