10 Things I Hate About You Review

 

        I remember watching this one back when I was in high school. I forgot the actual reason as to why the entire class watched the film, but it was enjoyable on my end. Some people don’t know that it was actually a modern day take on the classic Shakespeare play The Taming of the Shrew. I’ll go into detail as to why in the 90s there was so much modern day takes on classic literature and Shakespeare. SPOILERS will appear in the review. 

1. High School Shakespeare

        The whole film takes place in a high school in Seattle, Washington. The film is about the new kid Cameron, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who befriends Michael. He shows him around the school’s various cliques. Cam likes the prettiest girl he sees, Bianca played by Larisa Oleynik who can’t date anyone since her older sister is the shrew in this story. Kat played by Julia Stiles, is the antisocial one of the cast of characters. 

So throughout the movie, Michael and Cameron try to scheme a way to have Kat get a date so that Cam can date Bianca. Patrick played by the late Heath Ledger, goes along with the plan when the pretty boy Joey gives him the money to date Kat so that he can date Bianca. One would think that Patrick would pretend to care about Kat, but he eventually opens up to her to shed out the tough guy image. 

I feel as a whole the film is a good bookend of the decade. As far as I’m aware there weren’t that many high school films that were released in the 90s that was as popular as the ones that came out during the 80s. With this one, the whole decade and the feel of the movie is like one big character. To make my point short, everything just shouts the time period. 

2. Product of the Times

        You know it’s the 90s when it’s dominated by alternative rock, and ska. Aside from the wise choice to not use grunge music from either Nirvana or Soundgarden since it’s tied to Seattle. The whole movie is like a time capsule of the times. It would be interesting if aside from the music they would use dated slang to really capture the times. The wise thing was that everything feels authentic in terms of speech since it’s supposed to be a timeless story that’s part of a list of adaptations of the Shakespeare play.

        Also, Kenneth Branagh pumped out movies of Shakespeare films where he did the dual roles as actor and director. It was like the decade was a sort of celebration of Shakespeare or just a way to make more money by adapting classic plays since the money was there. I’m serious, Disney’s The Lion King is an adaptation of Hamlet and made bank for the studio. In 1998, Shakespeare in Love won best picture in the Academy Awards. Some may argue that it didn’t deserve it as some declare that Saving Private Ryan was the film that should’ve won but was snubbed. 

3. Modern Day Take on a Classic

        Since the decade is practically the overall theme of this review, the whole era had films that was littered with modern takes of classic stories. Films like Clueless and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet showed the audience a unique adaptation of having the classic story but set in the places where it’s believable. What made this film work is that with the high school background it couldn’t be any perfect to have a Shakespeare comedic play. It broke ground by having one of the characters really put the female characters in their place by saying they aren’t who they really are. 

        It’s the charm factor that the entire cast has that really sell the movie to anyone. One thing I would say that can get a bit frustrating is those moments where the film sprinkles in the Shakespeare references. I can understand that the general public has no clue that this was an adaptation. To the ones that do know that it is, can find it grating since it pops up every once in a while, the film will drop references. Although with that, we wouldn’t actually have the moment where the title of the film actually means something in the end.  

4. Overall

        Bottom line, this is an enjoyable adaptation of the classic play. It’s one of those films where you don’t have to know or read the play to really understand what’s going to happen. There are moments where I laughed a lot which is something that I didn’t expect with this film. The whole film reminds me of the 90s with the music and, I think it’ll be the next decade to be exploited in cinema. 

        10 Things I Hate About You gets a four out of five.