With the bombardment of hopeless teen movies (High School Musicals-1, 2, 3...really hope they stop!) In the past decade many of us have lost the will to actual sit through another one of those bad boy-good girl movies. At a time like this, is when I came across Gil Junger’s 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU. Primarily, the fact that this movie starred an early Heath Ledger gave me the required push to watch the movie.
The movie is largely based on the Shakespeare play "The Taming of the Shrew" and caught me by complete surprise with its treatment of a regular high school story. Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is new to Padua High and is being shown around the school by Michael (David Krumholtz). It is here that he sees and immediately falls in love with Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) and on probing about finds out that she has an extremely uptight father who would allow her to date a guy only if her sister, Kat (Julia Stiles) is also dating someone.
What this movie has, that makes it different from the other million movies made in this genre is heart. The characters in the movie are very easy for us to identify with and understand what goes around in their head. Though the overall acting by everyone is extremely good it’s the chemistry between Kat and Patrick that really gets this movie going. Most importantly Kat’s character development as a royal bitch of a person to someone with a soul is shown in a very smooth way and it can be clearly noticed by how we respond to her character at different stages in the movie.
The only place this movie falls flat is the use of stereotypical high school characters who aren’t really necessary. But on the whole this movie is very entertaining watch and without doubt THE best teen movie of the 90’s.
EYE CATCHER:
Heath Ledger's singing of Frankie Valli's Can't take my eyes off you.
IMDB RATING: 6.8 ON 10
