10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Rating: 4/10 (16 February 2014)

There are good and bad things about this film. First, the bad, there's an over-reliance on teenage movie character archetypes; the good looking sensitive rebel (Heath Ledger), the semi-intellectual rebellious feminist rebel (Julia Stiles), the seemingly vapid princes with emotional depth (Larisa Oleynik), the slightly goofy and sweet natured nice guy who inevitably gets the girl (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the conceited mean-spirited athlete/model (Andrew Keegan). There's also a few teachers and parent authority figures thrown in with only slight character development. It's a reworking of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew with Heath Ledger in the Richard Burton role of Petruchio and Julia Stiles in the Elizabeth Taylor role of Katarina. That's a heavy pair of shoes to fill and this Shakespeare-lite teenage comedy that is intended for an audience that's probably largely illiterate in the classics.