Been There, Done That...But Not Bad

by Jason R. Hewlett

There has been a huge glut of movies geared to teens in cinemas lately. You've read me complain about them constantly in my last few reviews because that's all that I've had to watch lately. After meditating on the subject of this disturbing trend and why most of the film don't work for me I've come, with the help of my input of a few friends, to a conclusion why: most of the films strive to be more than entertainment. Some try to be too edgy or pass on a moral or be anything more than they are...which is a 90 minute diversion. Now comes the latest foray into teen movie making, "10 Things I Hate About You," and well it isn't great cinema it is that all important thing: entertaining.

Hang on. Let me rephrase that: it's entertaining enough!

The movie plays out like a high school remake of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew." Bad boy Patrick (Heath Ledger) is coerced by young Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to take out the unapproachable Kat (Julia Stiles) so that he can date her gorgeous sister Bianca (the gorgeous Larisa Oleynik). Why such an arrangement? Well, it seems that the girls share a rather unfair rule imposed on them by their dad(Larry Miller): the only way that one of them can date is if the other can date.

That's about it for plot really but the movie doesn't even attempt to go beyond that. Sure it's predictable: the bad boy isn't really all that bad, the shrew is really quite sensitive, the stuck-up gal isn't all that stuck-up, everything unfolds during the third act high school prom, etc.,etc., etc.. We've seen it all before.

Where the film does work is on the level of pure, shameless, drivel. Karen Lutz's and Kirsten Smith's script is full of lewd gags and balls-out physical comedy that is, most of the time, quite funny. It's not all that smart or rapid-fire enough to blow one away like 30 minutes of "The Simpsons" does but it works. It's a fair shake more amusing than "Never Been Kissed" or "Go" that's for sure. Director Gil Junger works some visual magic as well with some groovy camera angles that keeps the story flowing visually and stages one of the best serenades I've seen in awhile. The cast, particularly Daryl "Chill" Mitchell as a teacher with attitude to spare, do well too. They knew they were just out to make a piece of entertainment and it comes through well.

Now, this is by no means a film to rival "The Matrix" or even the similarly themed "She's All That" but it did prove itself better than what I've seen in the last few weeks and I'm thankful for that.

5 out of 10!