
I missed 10 Things I Hate About You the first time around. It came out in March of 1999, but I have no memory of it. Because I was a college sophomore at the time, teen romances were off my radar. Also, American Pie was released a few months later and blotted out everything else in youth culture that year. 1999 was the year of American Pie, and 10 Things, with its cute, PG-13 take on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, barely made a ripple.
When you look at both movies, 10 Things seems conspicuously old, as if it came out a decade before American Pie rather than a few months before. In part, 10 Things aged so poorly because of the soundtrack. The two movies share some of the same music, like Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week,” a song that perfectly captures the obnoxiousness of the 90s. But after BNL, 10 Things leans heavily into Letters to Cleo, a group that disbanded a year after the movie came out, and the ska band, Save Ferris. Just like acapella music, I didn’t hear much ska after leaving college. American Pie went with hits by Sugar Ray, Third Eye Blind, and Blink-182--groups that are somehow still together. (Sugar Ray will be performing at the Pierogi Fest on July 27 in Whiting, Indiana. Tell your folks!) 10 Things feels dated because it uses dead music tied to one brief moment in time.
The obtrusive camerawork also dates the movie. The camera constantly circles characters, calling unnecessary attention to itself, like when shitty writers arbitrarily alliterate. The aggressive camerawork feels like something from The Grind, Soul Train for the MTV generation, or maybe it’s more like the footage from an annoying 90s dad following you around with a camcorder.
It might be the dialogue, peppered with lines from Shakespeare, that makes the movie feel so old. Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) utters, “I burn, I pine, I perish,” when he falls for Bianca (Larisa Oleynik). Characters use plowing analogies to refer to sex or insults like “rampallian” to describe the shrewish Kat (Julia Stiles). Nothing ages a movie like language from the 1600s.
I wonder if American Pie distorted our perception of teens so much that if they aren’t doing something foul, like fornicating with a baked good, drinking beer spiked with ejaculate, or making it with a classmate’s mother, they then appear to be from another quainter time period, like teens in Pleasantville (which came out a year earlier, in 1998, but also appears more modern than 10 Things).
Ultimately, I think it’s the actors and the success they had after 10 Things that make it feel so old. The actors in American Pie didn’t follow up with much of a movie career. Jason Biggs was recently in The Best Christmas Ever, a Netflix original that felt more like a Hallmark Channel offering. He failed to become anything more than the pie fucker from American Pie. Those are the only words his IMDb page or tombstone will require. He hasn’t starred in anything after that to make anyone watching American Pie say, “Hey, it’s that guy from [a modern movie].” But 10 Things is filled with actors who went on to make better movies. We have a 19-year-old Heath Ledger who played so many great roles like the prison guard in Monster’s Ball, a complicated ranch hand in Brokeback Mountain, and a wonderfully chaotic Joker in The Dark Knight; Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who looks more like the 14-year-old kid from Third Rock From the Sun than Tom from 500 Days of Summer or a young Joe from Looper; and Julia Stiles, who randomly shows up in Bourne movies but also had a pretty good run in Dexter. When we watch 10 Things, we see young actors just starting their careers. They’re in the “before” stage of their lives, and this makes the movie seem ancient.
Should you watch 10 Things? No, absolutely not. Teen love is intolerable and should be left to the teens. However, if you choose to watch it, do it with someone in their mid-40s. A funny thing about 10 Things is that it’s become a bit like a Shakespearean play in that it's filled with references people don’t get anymore. Someone from my time can help you make sense of what the characters are saying about Dawson’s Creek and Shaft or explain why the dad is doing sit-ups using a circular rolling device. Someone my age can point out how Julia Stiles dancing on the table at the party foreshadows her role in Save the Last Dance or tell you what the MTV show The Real World meant to 90s kids and how it inspired us to move the fuck away after high school. This movie benefits from being annotated, like the copies of Romeo and Juliet that kids from the slower English classes used, the ones with a “translated” version on the other side of the page.
10 Things I Hate About You
Written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith; Directed by Gil Junger
1999
97 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Disney+
You’ll like this if you like: Save the Last Dance (2001), Dangerous Minds (1995)