10 Things I Hate About You

Comedy

Gil Junger
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
Daryl Mitchell	Mr. Morgan (as Daryl 'Chill' Mitchell)

Director	Gil Junger
Producer	Andrew Lazar
Writer	Karen McCullah Lutz; Kirsten Smith

It's, like, Shakespeare, man! This good-natured and likeable update of The Taming of the Shrew takes the basics of Shakespeare's farce about a surly wench and the man who tries to win her and transfers it to modern-day Padua High School. Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is a sullen, forbidding riot grrrl who has a blistering word for everyone; her sunny younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) is poised for high school stardom. The problem: overprotective and paranoid Papa Stratford (a dryly funny Larry Miller) won't let Bianca date until boy-hating Kat does, which is to say never. When Bianca's pining suitor Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets wind of this, he hires the mysterious, brooding Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) to loosen Kat up. Of course, what starts out as a paying gig turns to true love as Patrick discovers that underneath her brittle exterior, Kat is a regular babe. The script, by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, is sitcom-funny with peppy one-liners and lots of smart teenspeak; however, its cleverness and imagination doesn't really extend beyond its characters' Renaissance names and occasional snippets of real Shakespearean dialogue. What makes the movie energetic and winning is the formula that helped make She's All That such a big hit: two high-wattage stars who look great and can really act. Ledger is a hunk of promise with a quick grin and charming Aussie accent and Stiles mines Kat's bitterness and anger to depths usually unknown in teen films; her recitation of her English class sonnet (from which the film takes its title) is funny, heartbreaking and hopelessly romantic. The imperious Allison Janney (Primary Colors) nearly steals the film as a no-nonsense guidance counsellor secretly writing a trashy romance novel. --Mark Englehart