Ten Things I Hate About You

Summary

Sometimes crude, usually clever, and often very funny high school version of The Taming of the Shrew - without the Shakespearean dialogue - is charming and upbeat, overflowing with punchy if retro rock-and roll music. Oddball characters and lively performances daunted within a run-of-the-mill and at times formulaic teenage situation comedy.

Production

Directed by Gil Junger. Written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. 1999. 1:37.

Cast

Heath Ledger (Patrick Verona), Julia Stiles (Katarina Stratford), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Cameron James), Larisa Oleynik (Bianca Stratford), David Krumholtz (Michael Eckman), Andrew Keegan (Joey Donner), Susan May Pratt (Mandella), Gabrielle Union (Chastity), Larry Miller (Walter Stratford), Daryl "Chill" Mitchell (Mr. Morgan), Allison Janney (Ms. Perky), David Leisure (Mr. Chapin).

Analysis

Gil Junger's teenage romantic comedy Ten Things I Hate About You is less an adaptation of Shakespeare than it is a sharp-witted modern high school comedy - penned by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith - that borrows a skeletal plot framework from The Taming of the Shrew. Sisters Katarina and Bianca are here, surnamed Stratford, but the story is not set in Padua, Italy but modernized within the hormone-infused hallways of Padua High School in Seattle, Washington. Shakespeare's protagonist, Petruchio of Verona, is here Patrick Verona, the school's curly-haired enigmatic bad-boy who smokes cigarettes in class and is rumored to have sold his liver on the black market for a set of speakers. Lucentio and Tranio from The Taming of the Shrew are in Junger's film the nerdish but likeable Cameron and Michael, the former head-over-heels in love with the pixieish Bianca and the latter his erstwhile, if ineffectual - "the last party I went to was at Chuck E. Cheese" - friend and helper. At its best Ten Things I Hate About You is a smartly played, cleverly written comedy with few but interesting Shakespearean undertones, and at its worst it is a cloying and formulaic high school rom-com with the requisite rowdy party and culminating prom scene.

The adults in Lutz and Smith's new screenplay serve as comic relief - especially the faculty at Padua High - even more absurd than their lovesick students. Mr. Chapin, the soccer coach and detention monitor, is hit on the head with a golf ball from a long drive, takes an arrow in the buttocks during archery practice on the football field, relieves a nervous student of a bag of pot as well as a package of Cheetos - "I'm confiscating this...this too" - and finds himself distracted by a student (Kat, no less) baring her breasts so Patrick can sneak out a window in escape. Ms. Perky, an oversexed guidance counselor with eyeglasses and her hair in a bun, types away at her sexually graphic romance novel - "what's another word for 'engorged'?" - and tells Cameron all schools are similar, with the "same little ass-wipe shit-for-brains everywhere." And the fed up African-American English teacher, Mr. Morgan - "pipe down, Chachi!" - belittles the lily-white white-bread student body ("all those years of upper-middle class suburban oppression") before stunning them with the rap rhythm of Sonnet 141 - "in faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes" - and assigning them to rewrite it: "I know Shakespeare's a dead white guy, but he knows his shit."

Julia Stiles' pouty but intellectual Katarina - "I'm not hostile, I'm annoyed" - is Junger's central character, and she pulls up in her beater muscle car, blaring hard rock (Joan Jett: "I don't give a damn about my reputation") and menacing the four yuppie teeny-boppers dancing to cheesy bubble-gum pop within their convertible. Kat physically intimidates her classmates as well, tearing down a poster for Padua Prom 2000 and running roughshod over an opponent on the soccer field. Like Patrick, rumors circulate regarding her dangerousness: she is correctly thought to have kneed a classmate in the groin, although "his testicle retrieval operation went quite well." Stiles' Kat is referred to as "a bitter self-righteous hag who has no friends" and by the Shakespearean Michael as "the mewling, rampalian wretch herself." Despite her hubris - "I don't care what people think" - she proves a grieving teenager, suffering from a broken romantic relationship as well as abandonment by her mother, both during her freshman year. Bianca describes her sister's interests as "Thai food, feminist prose and angry girl music," and Junger's camera finds Kat at home curled up shoeless like an early 1970s hippie, listening to guitar rock - "sunshine on the window makes me happy like I should be" - and reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. When her father casually inquires if she has made anyone cry today, Stiles' Kat responds, "sadly, no, but it's only 4:30," and both Bianca and her friend Chastity mimic her disparagement of "meaningless, consumer-driven lives" as if they have heard it from Kat many times before. Stiles' Kat accomplishes something of a teenage star-turn in Ten Things I Hate About You, ranging from wickedly venomous insults - she disparages a boy going to the prom as "some Drakkar Noir-wearing dexter with a boner" - to self-aware motherly concern for Bianca - "I know you hate having to sit at home because I'm not Suzy High School" - to adolescent-chic pushing of her father's hot buttons: when asked Bianca's whereabouts, Kat responds, "she's meeting some bikers, big ones, full of sperm."

While Stiles' Kat is the central personality around which the plot turns, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's boyishly likeable new kid Cameron is the instigator. The equivalent of Shakespeare's Lucentio, Cameron's crush on Bianca - he spots her on campus as she strolls by in slow motion and rising music, wearing a pink-flowered sun dress and a necklace - is sudden and consuming. As Junger's camera slowly spins around them at the center of the Padua grounds, Cameron's new friend Michael - played with a dweebish intelligence and lack of self-awareness by David Krumholtz in the finest performance of the film - explains the social reality of ingénue Bianca: "she, my friend, is what we will spend the rest of our lives not having." Despite Cameron's exclamations directly from The Taming of the Shrew - "I burn, I pine, I perish" - the lovely Bianca is a member of the "don't even think about it" group of social elite, as opposed to the other, lesser groups: the coffee kids, the white Rastas, the cowboys ("the closest they've come to a cow is McDonald's") and Michael's own brainiac future MBAs. Larisa Oleynik's Bianca - wearing her mother's prized pearls and pet-named "precious" by her father - is a picture-perfect, button-nosed sweet young thing with a self-absorbed princess mentality - "I happen to like being adored, thank you" - and a tongue as sharp as her sister's: "where did you come from, Planet Loser?" Cameron overhears her conversation with Chastity, comically marveling at her supposed depth, as she ponders the difference between "like" and "love": "I like my Sketchers, but I love my Prada backpack." When Cameron, a la Lucentio, crash courses in French so he can tutor the impossibly cute Bianca, she refers to him as "Curtis" then "Calvin," and she puts him off asking her out by telling him that her father forbids her to date unless Katarina is also dating, starting an avalanche of romantic adolescent gamesmanship.

Krumholtz's droll Michael steals scene after scene, whether it be careening down a hill on his baby motorcycle - with its red plastic mini-basket on the handle bars - then sprawling in a crash that incurs wild applause from his classmates, or gathering a crew of high school misfits to date Katarina: one screams in horror, one laughs, and another tells him, "maybe if we were the last two people alive...and there were no sheep." At a biker bar seeking out Patrick, Krumholtz's Michael advises Cameron, "don't touch anything, you might get hepatitis," and at the infamous Bogey Lowenstein party, he tries to impress a girl with witty banter, but says only, "I'm thinking of getting a Tercel ... yeah, that's a Toyota."

Larry Miller's hyper-concerned Dad, an obstetrician with an intrusive pager, is an over-the-top delight, imposing his house rules - "number one: no dating until you graduate, and number two: no dating until you graduate" - insulting his daughters' male classmates ("unwashed miscreants") and advising the girls before they leave for a party: "no ritual animal slaughters of any kind." Miller's Dr. Stratford, more concerned and worried about raising two teenaged daughters himself than being truly strict, seems to have a smirk on his face and a twinkle in his eye even when deflecting claims about a study group - "otherwise known as an orgy?" - or that an upcoming event is "just" a party - "and hell is just a sauna" - and he requires his eye-rolling daughters to don a faux-pregnancy suit - "wear the belly!" - so they understand potential consequences. Miller's baby doctor delivers, pun intended, one of the film's funniest lines - "kissing isn't what keeps me up to my elbows in placenta all day long" - and his comical street-lingo diatribe is laugh out loud funny - "I'm down, I've got the 411, and you are not going out and getting jiggy with some boy, I don't care how dope his ride is" - elevated further by Miller's turning and muttering, "Mama didn't raise no fool." His single-parent resistance to Kat's pursuit of an East Coast college is understandable, but Miller renders his ultimate acceptance poignant, as he is silently embraced by Kat with such gratitude he barely knows how to respond.

Heath Ledger's Patrick Verona is the Australian-accented tamer of Kate, a tough guy who wields his own switchblade to dissect a frog in biology class and uses a Bunsen burner in a chemistry classroom to light a cigarette. Despite rampant rumors regarding his earlier high school years, including theories about doing time in San Quentin and setting a state trooper on fire - "I heard he ate a live duck once" - Cameron and Michael are convinced only Patrick ("he's our guy") can successfully woo Stiles' Katarina. When they approach him in woodshop class, Ledger's slightly unhinged Patrick says nothing but drills a gaping hole through Cameron's French textbook, so they turn to male model Joey Donner, who is also in pursuit of Bianca, to be their backer, or, "someone with money, who's stupid." Andrew Keegan's immaculately coiffed Joey is first seen drawing female breasts on a lunch tray with a magic marker in the cafeteria, and he then draws a phallus on Michael's cheek as he hears the plan to have Patrick date Kat so Joey can date Bianca (and Cameron can steal her away). In a film rich with deft comic performances, Keegan's narcissistic Joey manages several laughs, referring to Bogey Lowenstein as "Bogey Lowenbrau," winking at himself in his locker mirror, impressing the girls - "I'm up for a hemorrhoid crème ad next week" - who flock around him - and demonstrating his poses for underwear and bathing suit advertisements.

Ledger's burnt-out Patrick walks the edge of crudity, questioning the admiration for the vacuous Bianca - "what is it with this chick, she have beer-flavored nipples?" - and responding to Michael's poetically earnest, "sweet love, renew thy force," with a self-consciously blunt, "don't say shit like that to me, people can hear you." He and Keegan's poster-boy Joey strike a comically uneasy alliance - "take it or leave it, Trailer Park" versus "fifty bucks and we got a deal, Fabio" - and even though Ledger's Patrick fails twice to impress Stiles' Kat, he finds himself enamored with her quick wit and forthright nature. He laughs out loud when she intentionally backs her car - "whoops!' - into Joey's sporty convertible - Dr. Stratford: "my insurance does not cover PMS!" - and he admiringly watches Kat dance at the all-girl Club Skunk, talking to her over the loud music but finding himself shouting, "I've never seen you look so sexy" in sudden silence as a song abruptly ends, making everyone laugh, but especially Kat.

Patrick's pursuit of Katarina lags a bit during a rowdy party scene that slows the pace of the story and even cheapens some of the poignant portions of the story, seeming so much an obligatory part of a required high school comedy formula. A Wine & Cheese Party for Future MBAs Only event predictably becomes a Free Beer Party free-for-all, but Junger dazzles with his finest camera work, a great slow-spin shot to music - "sexy boy" - of fluttering yellow party invitations coming down in slow motion in a Padua High stairwell. After a quick shot of Cameron and Michael - "stop being so self-involved for one minute: how do I look?" - Junger cuts to the Lowenstein household as the doorbell rings - "must be Nigel with the brie" - and the high school kids take over the house, setting up a DJ who spins the Thompson Twins, and liquor flows, a smoke haze develops, kids spit chewing tobacco into a Waterford crystal bowl, and of course a fight breaks out that crashes right through a plate glass window. With Bianca seemingly captivated with Joey, Stiles' disillusioned Kat begins pounding shots of tequila, and the crushed Cameron - to the lyric, "you'll never be mine" - begins dejectedly to leave. Ledger's Patrick, far from a prude himself, seems like a concerned boyfriend, hovering nearby Kat, and when she inexplicably leaps atop a dining room table for a sexy stripper dance, she delights the crowd but bangs her head into the above chandelier. Ledger's Patrick is there to catch her, and he gentlemanly brings her outside, shows concern for a potential concussion, and seats her on a swing set. Ledger's Patrick reveals some wisdom and natural gallantry, and he takes time to deliver to Cameron some pointed advice - "don't let anyone ever make you feel that you don't deserve what you want" - before returning to dote on Katarina. After they share a laugh, he keeps her from sleeping - "Kat, look at me!" - and their quiet moment becomes poignant - "your eyes have a little green in them," she tells him - before turning comical, as she vomits at his feet.

Junger rescuscitates a decided slow spell in Ten Things I Hate About You with a pair of driving-home scenes, first Kat and Patrick, then Michael and Bianca, who has been ditched by Joey. With the Hamlet-nod "Cruel to be Kind" playing on the car radio, Kat and Patrick share long looks then superficial revelations - "the only thing people know about me is that I'm scary" and, "I'm no picnic myself" - before Stiles' Kat leans in for a kiss. Surprisingly, Ledger's gentlemanly Patrick demurs, embarrassing Kat, but as he admits later to Cameron: "I didn't do anything...she would have been too drunk to remember." Junger then cuts to Gordon-Levitt's equally gentlemanly Cameron, driving Bianca home despite his broken heart. He both compliments and insults her - "just because you're beautiful doesn't mean you can treat people like they don't matter" - and when he asks her, "have you always been this selfish?" Bianca's response is a knowing but soft-spoken, "yes." Her reaction to Cameron's exasperated, "I learned French for you!" is to lean over for a meaningful first kiss, and Junger's shot of Cameron and Bianca the next day at school, all sly glances and slow motion to the churning tune of "I can't get enough of you, baby" reveals the beginnings of a deep relationship. Junger follow with Michael's meet-cute with Mandella, a Shakespeare aficionado friend of Kat's, in a relationship that seems perfunctory and added on, perhaps to lend weight to an already sparse story line. They quote from Macbeth to one another - "who could refrain that had a heart to love" - after he jokes about her fluffy white-collared portrait of Shakespeare on Mandella's locker door: "is that to keep him from licking his stitches?"

After Ledger's Patrick weakly attempts apology, following Stiles' Kat to a music store - lyric: "I'm not the sort of person who falls in and quickly out of love" - he watches her with a guitar, then shadows her within a bookstore and asks for her copy of The Feminine Mystique, he in turn is given surprisingly wise advice from Cameron: "you embarrassed the girl...sacrifice yourself on the altar of dignity and even the score." Although Patrick accepts even more money from Joey - "I'm sick of playing your little game" - he pays off the school marching band to the song, "there's a new kind of world taking over," and during soccer practice, commandeers a public address microphone. After a deep breath, Ledger's too-cool-to-be-true Patrick begins crooning a Frankie Valli standard - "you're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you" - in full view of a practice field filled with soccer players, coaches, and a marching band. They stare in shock as he slides down the flagpole, then dances and belts out, "I love you baby!" as the marching band plays on cue in full force, trumpets and drums, marching in time. Ledger's Patrick points at Kat, who beams, then stomps down the stairs, still singing, and prances in a sideways strut through the seats. Now pursued by security guards and cheered by the students, Ledger's Patrick abandons all self-image in an endearingly sappy sequence, slapping a chasing guard on the bottom and mugging for Kat. Later, they paddleboat together then battle one another at paint ball to the song "fascinating new thing," falling into a bale of hay for their first kiss in a groaningly pubescent love scene - "you're lovely and you're perfect" - that continues seemingly forever, made bearable only by the natural chemistry between the charming Ledger and the beautiful Stiles.

Junger laces his brief film with edgy and upbeat modern rock-and-roll and covers of retro-rock - "take time for your pleasure and laugh with love" - and the penultimate scene at the high school prom is loaded with live music - "shout, shout!" - and the band playing "Cruel to Be Kind" for Kat - "oh, I can't take another heartache" - the lead singer even finding them on the dance floor because Patrick "called in a favor." They dance, Patrick confessing that he spent the last year caring for his ailing grandfather - and, "I didn't sleep with a Spice Girl, I don't think" - but recoiling at the revelation from Joey that he had paid Patrick to "take out Kat." Kat storms off the dance floor - Michael: "the shit hath hitteth the faneth" - and Patrick pursues as Cameron confronts Joey and is knocked down. Oleynik's now Kat-like Bianca, having made her choice in Cameron, then punches Joey twice in the face - "Bianca, I'm shooting a nose spray ad tomorrow!" - then knees him in the groin. As the soundtrack continues - "that's how love goes" - Patrick fails to make amends with Kat, and more prom music plays: "you will fly and you will crawl, god knows even angels fall."

Junger's bright and funny little film concludes the next school day, with the laconic Mr. Morgan challenging anyone in his English class to read their Shakespearean love poem aloud. Of course, Kat volunteers, and Stiles' wounded Kat mesmerizes, reading her heartfelt poetry in a slowly moving close-up. Reciting first in self-conscious detachment, then with a self-deprecating smirk, she starts to cry. Finally, she turns her gaze upon Ledger's Patrick, and beginning to bawl, finishes her titular poem, and rushes out past him.

The scene is easily the most effective and moving in Junger's film, and the camera then inds Kat at her car, discovering the Fender Strat vintage guitar Patrick has of course bought for her with his money from Joey: "I had some extra cash, you know." They kiss and reconcile - "you can't just buy me a guitar every time you screw up, you know" - and Junger cuts to the prom band Letter to Cleo, now covering Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" on the school rooftop, their closing performance captured with sweeping shots from helicopters. The punchy music and cloying conclusion typify Junger's film, a sometimes edgy and frequently funny little Shakespearean-inflected teenaged romance.