Actually a pretty good teen movie

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2007)

Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a shy, somewhat dorky, but good-hearted new guy at Padua High School in Washington State. He falls head over heels for Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik), a somewhat vapid popular girl who is not allowed to date by her father (Larry Miller) until her older sister Katarina (Julia Stiles) does. Sadly for Bianca - who is also the target of sleazy jock Joey's (Andrew Keegan), er, affection - Kat is a man-hating feminist rebel, so there's no way in hell of that happening, right? However, Joey, Cameron, and popularity-craving Michael (David Krumholz) hatch a scheme to convince the school "bad boy" Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) to date Kat - and of course, things don't go quite according to plan.
I went into this movie not expecting to like it; to say I'm not a fan of the teen movie genre is a huge understatement. The main reason I watched it is because a lot of my friends at school liked it, so I decided, what the hell? Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised.
I really appreciate the fact that "Ten Things I Hate About You" is, for the most part, a notch above most teen comedies. While its plot is cliché, it is lacking in gross-out/scatological humor (there's some but not an excessive amount). I appreciate the comparatively intelligent humor, and the very well-written script and characters. I loved Patrick's song-and-dance number at the soccer practice - perhaps the funniest scene I've yet seen in a teen film - and Katrina's sparring with her English teacher (Daryl Mitchell) over Hemingway, Shakespeare, and related topics (I do similar things at school so I really appreciated that). The ties to "The Taming of the Shrew" didn't really catch my interest - I mean, you can only stay so faithful to Shakespeare in a modern-day high school setting, though I appreciated the effort.
The big problem I usually have with teen comedies, past and present, is that I find it hard to relate to any of the characters. The "American Pie" films feature teens who obsessed with sex and nothing else. And while that subject is certainly on the minds of teens quite frequently, with school, college, extracurriculars, etc., it certainly isn't the ONLY thing we think about. (If "American Pie" was funny I'd be more willing to let that slide, but that's another review.) Even movies like "The Breakfast Club" and "Footloose" which feature less clichéd teenagers don't really engage me.
However, with "Ten Things", while I couldn't personally relate to any of the film's characters - I'm probably closest to Cameron, though the odds of my getting a girl like Bianca are slim to nil - I was able to sympathize with them, perhaps because they didn't spend the whole film ejaculating into a pie or talking about it afterward. They were all believable characters, and ones I can recognize from school. I've known many, many girls who are like Kat, and so hers was probably the most believable of all.
The film's depiction of adults is not too bad, and that's always a plus for me. It's not a big deal, but I don't like the fact that most kid/teen movies portray adults as martinets or idiots. Mr. Straford is strict and somewhat dorky, but at least we get to see he has his daughters' best interest at heart. And the characters of Mr. Morgan (Daryl Mitchell) the black militant English teacher and Ms. Perky (the always-wonderful Allison Janney), the sex-obsessed guidance counselor, provide amusing scenes, brief though their appearances are.
The acting is not "Paul Scofield holding a skull" (to quote Roger Ebert), but it's good enough for the material. Julia Stiles creates a very believable character as Kat, a tough outsider who is at heart an insecure girl with inner demons to combat. Heath Ledger is also a standout as Patrick, the bad boy who's really not so bad. Larisa Oleynik, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Andrew Keegan, David Krumholz, Susan May Pratt and Gabrielle Union all create believable characters, though they're somewhat overshadowed by the leads. Larry Miller, Daryl Mitchell, and Allison Janney do fine work with fairly two-dimensional characters, but then the story's not really about them, is it?
"Ten Things I Hate About You" deserves credit for transcending the teen movie genre and just being a really pleasant and enjoyable film. It isn't nasty, it isn't too gross or vulgar, and its only sin is its (understandable) regression to age-old clichés (how many times do we need to see a romantic bet turn into real love?). To quote Ebert again, "One of the pleasures of going to movies is to meet nice people." By that score, "Ten Things" is a triumph.
7/10