One of them is the inspired way Junger and his collaborators have played off the original. In Ten Things I Hate About You, Lutz and Smith have used The Taming of the Shrew as their source, substituting the rich suburbs of Seattle, Washington, for 14th-century Verona, Italy. What they have retained from the original, though, is the air of swooning romanticism.
The story begins when Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a newly arrived sophomore who is being given a tour of Padua High School by his friend Michael (David Krumholtz), first lays eyes on Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) and falls madly in love. Cameron wants to go out with this comely fellow student, but there is a slight problem for anyone who would like to ask Bianca out on a date. By proclamation of her hilariously nervous and overprotective father (Larry Miller), Bianca cannot date until her older sister, Katarina (Julia Stiles), dates. And if Kat has anything to do with it, that won't be anytime soon. While everything about Bianca is gentle and sweet, everything about Kat is odious and rough. She hates boys, and the thought of dating even more. And so she terrorizes every unwitting lad who comes within shouting distance of her.
The setup, of course, belongs to Shakespeare, but director Gil Junger, making his feature debut here, can be credited for using everything the bard has given him to very best advantage. Junger received most of his directing experience in television, specifically on situation comedies. (He directed the famous coming-out episode of Ellen.) And his skill shows itself most in the way he keeps straight the various crisscrossing story lines.
He also has a considerable talent for getting confident performances out of his mostly inexperienced teenage cast. As Cameron, Gordon-Levitt is enormously winning as the character who, with considerable assistance from his geeky friend Michael, keeps pushing the story forward with his behind-the-scenes plotting. The one person in school who isn't terrified by Kat is Patrick (the Australia-born Heath Ledger), the school's notorious juvenile delinquent, who agrees to ask Kat out on a date only if he is paid for his trouble.
Since none of the characters are exactly as they seem, Kat is not nearly so unapproachable, and Patrick not nearly so tough. After growling at one another through a few scenes in the classic screwball style, the inevitable transformation takes place, and the obstacles to love fall away, not just for Patrick and Kat but for Cameron and Bianca as well. Even Michael is rewarded for his labors on love's behalf. Though it has a classical parentage, Ten Things I Hate About You is a small-scaled, slight undertaking, but its pleasures are unexpectedly rich. It has become a habit in our movies to portray the exploits of high-school-age characters as shocking and depraved. This film allows its teenagers their innocence and, even rarer these days, something like nobility.
Ten Things I Hate About You.
Rated PG-13.
Directed by Gil Junger. With Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Larisa Oleynik.