I hate the way you talk to me,
and the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car,
I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right, I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around,
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right, I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around,
and the fact that you didn't call...
Image found floating around Tumblr.
The year was 1999. I was twenty-one years old and resented teen movies - not because I thought I'd already outgrown them, but because they were usually poorly-produced crap with corny dialogues. Good thing there were a few exceptions in the vast flood of pathetic film misrepresentations of my generation.
Such as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999).
10 Things I Love About 10 Things I Hate About You
- It's a
bastardizedmodernized Shakespeare.
I have a sort of liking for Will's love children by contemporary cinema. Ten Things was based on the Bard's comedie, The Taming of the Shrew.
- Julia Stiles.
Not just another mean blonde in a teen flick, she played heinous bitch quite convincingly, while still being very appealing. I love how she hadn't just played the role but conveyed nuances (like how she slipped on a self-conscious smile in the serenade scene, or how she spontaneously blushed after flashing the coach).
After seeing this movie for the first time, I decided I was going to be a Julia Stiles fan -- but it turns out she was never into becoming that big of a star.
TRIVIA: Julia Stiles starred in 2 other adapted Shakespeares. She played Desi - based on Desdemona - in a campust-set version of Othelo entitled O (2001). She was also Ophelia in a modernized Hamlet (2000).
- Heath Ledger.
Heath Ledger was and is lovable in any role. I especially enjoy watching him croon over Kat from the bleachers.
Too bad we won't be seeing any more from him. :(
- The characters.
They were endearing, even the antagonistic classmates and the teachers. They didn't come off as trying too hard to look cool but were actually believable. Though absurdly exaggerated, the main characters seemed to represent real high-schoolers - not airbrushed movie stars - with just the right proportions of cuteness, naivete and awkwardness.
I also appreciate how the characters were not at all cliche teen-flick staples - no blonde cheerleader, no football jock, no bespectacled geeks.
- The casting.
I kinda think the cast was perfect. They were pretty much nobodies when that movie came out (except probably for Larisa Oleynik, who was easily recognizable as Alex Mack), but I could't imagine a better Kat Stratford, a better Patrick Verona, Cameron and so on. Well, I suppose there could be a better Bianca, but Larisa wasn't so bad.
Where are they now? Take a look at this for flash updates.
- The soundtrack.
Barenaked Ladies, Save Ferris, Letters To Cleo et al. To this day, I keep songs from 10 Things in my playlist.
- The witty, quippy script.
Particularly Kat's comebacks and AV Club geek Mikey's lines.
- The love-hate poem.
Even if it had a slight drizzling of cheese and corn, it was a clever deconstruction of a Shakespeare sonnet.
- Letters to Cleo in the end song.
The band rocked their version of I Want You To Want Me on a rooftop. Abominably cool.
- The outtakes that showed while the credits rolled.
The flick was funny enough by itself, but those scenes were a hilarious add-on.
Plus an extra thing, #11: Witch Hazel's song, Your Winter, a snippet of which played after Kat and Bianca's heart-to-heart. It isn't a fabulous song at all, not even my preferred genre, but it happens to have a particular significance to me. Your Winter somewhat spelled out how I felt over a relationship that ended about that time period.
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A few days ago, I was channel-surfing and I stumbled upon a TV series entitled 10 Things I Hate About You (2009). It had the familiar dialogues, but very alien faces. Confuddled, I watched it for a while and saw that it even had the same logotype for the title. What the -- ?
Apparently, ten years after Ten Things I Hate About You was first released, some people thought of making a television remake. Oh, say it isn't so! (More importantly - Has it really been ten years?) A bastardized bastardized Shakespeare. It had the same set of characters, only with a younger, blander cast (except for Mr. Stratford; the role is reprised by the same guy in the original flick). There were obvious attempts at cleverness, but it didn't have the cutting wit the '99 movie exploded with.
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