Despise the limit

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2000)

Kat, the furiously flip take no prisoners heroine of "10 things I hate about you" might be described as a ball buster, although that would hardly do her justice. Brainy, beautiful and haughty as hell, with dancing feline eyes she narrows in contempt at any guy unlucky enough to make a play for her, Kat has a lot in common with the babelicious teases who saunter through high school movies, like leonine queens of the adolescent jungle. The difference is that Kat isn't going to win any popularity contests. She's a willowy high strung misfit who armors herself with gender war rhetoric, pretending she's better than everyone around her. She uses her bitchery and wit to put down guys for the unforgivable crime of being guys. This may be the cheekiest "literary" update yet - a post riot grrrl gloss on "The taming of the shrew" with Shakespeare's plot twirled around devices that have become cliches, virtually overnight in the new teen comedies - the guy who struggles to land a girl in order to win a bet - the ingenue - in this case Kat's younger sister - the button nosed Bianca - who's a virgin to everything but consumerism. The film casts an amusingly jaundiced eye on the unholy status games of contemporary teen culture. When the big keg blowout arrives, it's a quesy tequila soaked suburban sprawl, with make out session glimpses in all their squirmy desperation and a nerd bragging to two girls about his play to buy... a Toyota Tercel. At the center of this nasty spitfire is, Kat. The young actress Julia Stiles in her first major roles, casually plays against her luminescent Pre-Raphaelite glow. At times her hot blooded earthiness recalls Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth" and she makes Kat cruelly ambivalent about the effect of her sexuality on others. Along the way Kat is wooed and then "tamed" by a suitor of surprising Charm - Patrick a gentle Aussie heart-throb who's like Val Kilmer before he went falky - he knows just how to kill Kat with kindess. The film's snappish crank case doesn't break any molds, but it certainly gives you a lift.