Teen comedies are so ubiquitous that it’s often difficult to find one that does something daring and new. But would you believe that the best film of this genre managed to do something new while adapting one of the oldest stories of them all? The 1999 William Shakespeare adaptation 10 Things I Hate About You (a movie featuring future Batman stars Heath Ledger and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is that movie.
The plot of 10 Things I Hate About You is that a newly-transferred high school student falls in love with a popular sophomore whose strict father has a simple rule: she can’t date anyone until her standoffish older sister begins dating. The new kid decides to make this rule work in his favor by getting that older sister to date the school’s resident bad boy. If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because this is a zany, zippy adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew set in a modern high school.
It’s downright impossible to hate the cast of this modern classic: Larisa Oleynik (best known for playing the lead role in The Secret World of Alex Mack) plays the younger sister that the character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (best known for Inception) is itching to date. Julia Stiles (best known outside this film for Save the Last Dance) plays her older sister, a standoffish gal more interested in books than boys. The late, great Heath Ledger (best known for The Dark Knight) plays the Aussie badboy destined to win her heart, but he’ll have to get over himself if he wants to break through her icy exterior.
Like some of the best modern Shakespeare adaptations (including Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet), 10 Things I Hate About You resonates with modern audiences thanks to its perfect casting. Even if you fell asleep reading the Bard back in high school, you are going to be glued to the screen watching these talented performers bring a centuries-old story to startling life. Scout’s honor: all it takes is a single viewing for you to understand why this movie became an instant classic for the ages.
10 Things I Hate About You’s Huge Cultural And Box Office Impact
Audiences had plenty of love for 10 Things I Hate About You, earning $53.7 million against a budget of only $13 million. Beyond the box office, this movie had an outsize cultural influence, leading to (for better or for worse) a renaissance of rom-coms in theaters and, later, on Netflix.
If you want something more like the OG movie, you’re in luck. Original director Gil Junger is planning an entire sequel trilogy, though none of these movies have gotten an official greenlight (but hey, we fans can dream, right?).
Over on Rotten Tomatoes, the critics decided that a Shakespeare play by any other name smelled just as sweet. 10 Things I Hate About You has a score of 71 percent, with critics praising the film’s clever script for going above and beyond the usual teen comedy fare. Critics also lavished heaps of well-deserved praise on Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, both of whom give performances powerful enough to do the impossible: make teens actually care about a dusty Shakespearean tale.
Will you agree that 10 Things I Hate About You is one of the best teen comedies ever made, or will it just give you flashbacks of those terrible Shakespeare lectures back in high school? The only way to find out is to hop over to Hulu and see if this crafty comedy lives up to half a century of hype. By the time the credits roll, you’ll never look at the Immortal Bard or Heath Ledger the same way ever again.
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