Story Pile: 10 Things I Hate About You
Okay.
Okay.
Before we get started, this movie is basically a book report for my generation. Like, this is a movie that a lot of English teachers (not mine, mine weren’t cool) let the students watch so they could do a comparison between the texts and maybe just once, just once get the students to give a damn about Shakespeare. That means that to me, I feel like 10 Things I Hate About You is probably almost boringly well-known.
Right?
I’m not about to tell you anything about this movie you don’t already know, except that I like it and also the soundtrack is really good. Still, let’s hit the basic beats:
- It’s a teen romance movie from the 90s
- It’s almost the most teen romance movie from the 90s
- The story is a re-framing of The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
- The Taming of the Shrew is super gross
- But 10 Things fixes a lot of things?
- And includes a passage about updating Shakespeare?
- But 10 Things fixes a lot of things?
- The Taming of the Shrew is super gross
- 10 Things I Hate About You was a breakout movie that introduced the world to:
- Heath Ledger, aka the Joker, tragically gone
- Julia Stiles, aka … Julia Stiles in this
- Joseph Gordon Levitt, aka everything
- Larisa Oleynik, who every Alex Mack fan already knew
- It’s super dated!
- Like, painfully so!
- The Shakespearean behaviour of the Dad is really weird in a modern concept
- There’s a dance number, for no good reason!
- The soundtrack is really good
Okay, I think that’s everything Lindsay Ellis covered when she talked about it, and that’s the critical background I have to work with, after all. We good? Okay, let’s go.
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