***SPOILERS***
10 Things I Hate About You is another of the current crop of teen high-school dramas crowding our cinemas this summer. Like She's All That, Clueless, and Cruel Intentions, the film is based on a classic text. This time it's The Taming of the Shrew - the shrew in this case being Kat Stratford, a senior at Padua High. Kat is a smart, straight-talking feminist, unwilling to buy into the BS required to be popular in high school. She goes her own way in everything and has managed to alienate her entire school in so doing: everything she says has a bitchy undertone and she manages to make the most innocent comment sound nasty. Her English teacher sends her out of the room every time she opens her mouth, since her tone suggests she's giving cheek no matter what she's actually saying. Early in the movie she is sent to her guidance counsellor, who tells her there is a problem with her attitude: she's - "tempestuous?" interrupts Kat. "A heinous bitch" says the counsellor, finishing her sentence cheerily (guidance counsellors say everything cheerily, even when they're being horrible).
Her little sister couldn't be more different. Bianca is a fun, bubbly airhead, darling of the school, and the only junior a senior would deign to ask to the prom. Cameron, a shy, sweet army brat new in town, wants to ask her out. So does Joey Donner, an obnoxious rich kid who's a part time model (and wears more makeup to school than most of the girls). But there's a problem. The girls' father (Larry Miller) is a gynaecologist, paranoid that his little girls will end up as teenage single mothers. So he has a hard-and-fast rule - Bianca cannot go on a date until Kat does. Since Kat despises all males, this presents a serious problem for Bianca, and by extension for Cameron and Joey. However, Cameron's friend Michael comes up with a plan. He convinces Joey to bribe someone to take Kat out on a date, so that he, Joey, can then ask out Bianca. Of course, the real plan is that once Kat is dating, Cameron will swoop in and steal Bianca out from under Joey's remodelled nose.
Now the only hurdle to jump is finding someone brave enough to go on a date with Kat. Enter Patrick Verona, brooding, smoking, long-haired, and scary. Scuttlebutt at the school has it that he spent the previous year in jail for setting a state trooper on fire; that he sold his own liver to buy stereo speakers; and that he once ate a live duck, all but beak and feet. It takes them a while to persuade him, but eventually, bribed with Joey's money, Patrick starts his disagreeable task. At first Kat gives him the brush-off, but he is persistent - hanging out in the feminist literature section of the bookshop to talk to her, tracking her down to a chick rock nightclub - and eventually he starts to make headway. Of course, being this kind of movie, he falls in love with her during their slow and difficult courtship, and, naturally, the course of true love runs anything but smooth. As in She's All That, just when she starts to reciprocate his feelings she finds out that he only asked her out because there was money involved. Of course, things do sort themselves out eventually, and there is a very happy ending.
In fact, overall this is a happy and delightfully un-sappy movie. It has some fun scenes - for example, Patrick singing "Ca'n't Take My Eyes Off Of You" to Kat over the school PA, backed by the school band - and a refreshingly light-hearted, cheerful air. Both romances - Kat and Patrick, Bianca and Cameron - are funny and affecting. Supporting characters, even though they play tiny roles, are amusing - the guidance counsellor who writes soft porn between appointments, the coach who confiscates hash and cheetos during detention which we somehow know wo'n't be handed into the school principal. Although Padua High resembles Beverly Hills High pretty closely (students have designer clothes, snazzy cars, and say "like, oh my God, like, duh" a lot) the school milieu, with its various cliques and uneasy alliances, is rendered convincingly enough to remind most of us of our school days (although flashing the teacher as a way of getting out of detention was new to me! 8)). The relationship between the sisters is also convincing: Bianca whines about what an awful older sister she's been landed with, fights with her, stomps around and slams doors, like every little brother or sister in the world. Kat, safe in the smug superiority of being older, infuriatingly refuses even to get into arguments with Bianca. When it comes down to it, though, the girls back each other up, and by the end of the film they have learned to understand each other a little better.
The soundtrack is good, if a bit heavy on Kat's beloved chick rock, and the direction is fine - nothing exciting, Gil Junger sits back and lets the actors get on with their job, which they do very well. The leads are basically unknown, and they bring a freshness to their roles as well as a sizzling chemistry. Heath Ledger, last seen in the TV series Roar, is just right as Patrick - big and scary enough to be believable as the object of rumour and speculation, but able to show he has a good soft heart under that hard man exterior. Julia Stiles is terrific as Kat. Even at her most bitchy and nasty a kind of natural good-temperedness shines through - she's not bitchy because she's a bitch, but because she's smart enough to be frustrated at the smallness of the school world she's caught in, the pecking order, the set-in-stone gender roles. Her character isn't rounded out enough, though. We do get an attempt to explain why she turned out as she did, having been one of the most popular girls in the school, but it's not very convincing. It's hard to see why such a militant personality would have resulted from what we are told about her.
Both James Gordon-Levitt (Cameron) and Larisa Oleynik (Bianca) are good in their respective roles - it's easy to see why everyone loves Bianca. A little like a young Drew Barrymore, Oleynik plays her fun, bubbly, and good-hearted. And Gordon-Levitt is convincing as Cameron - shy, well-meaning, sweet without being saccharine. Andrew Keegan is wonderfully oily and revolting as Joey Donner - the kind of guy who checks himself out in every mirror, we crave the moment when he will get his comeuppance.
As a comedy, 10 Things I Hate About You is a bit hit and miss. Parts which were obviously intended to get a big laugh fall completely flat, other parts are unintentionally funny. But the charm of this film isn't in the comedy. It's in its intelligent script, sharp, smart dialogue, and characters rounded enough to make us care about them. Best of all, it turns its source material on its head. In Shakespeare's play, Kate, a feisty, independent woman, is psychologically tortured until she crumbles to the will of Petrucchio. In 10 Things, Kat does have to learn how to open up to other people, but she does it without compromising her principles. Instead of, as in other teen dramas, eventually succumbing to popular notions and conforming (witness Rachael Leigh Cook's transformation in She's All That), she pairs off with a guy strong enough and secure enough to be happy with her just as she is. Whatever else happens to our shrew, she certainly isn't tamed.
(c) Jennifer Mellerick 1999