I was pleasantly surprised.
Outside of the 80s John Hughes movies, and especially in the late 90s and a good chunk of the 2000s I just don't watch high school teen films. Mostly because it always seems like the same damn movie, high school romance with stereotyped characters, and no real substance. And I held this movie right up there in that category, but I was incredibly shocked to find the movie was made in 1999 when such a concept as high school was as vague and alien a concept as you could get since I was 4 years old, and yet I always heard about this movie from the ages of 9 and up. 10 Things I Hate About You, what a great movie, it's a teen romance movie done so well, oh Heath Ledger is a dream in that movie, the praise was astronomical. And I just never watched it, I had no interest in it, even when we covered Shakespeare in school specifically The Taming Of The Shrew we watched the Elizabeth Taylor version and this movie. I was way more interested in the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton version than this one, cause the last time I saw Shakespeare modernized a few years before that....ugh. So this was really and truly my first real viewing of it. I, I kinda loved it guys. It's so much a teen high school romance movie and yet it totally isn't, it really is a film all of it's own with such a unique sense of humor and quirks that really took me off my guard in the opening scenes. The fact that this high school not only has the most wise ass and hilarious staff I've ever seen in my life, but also has and I kid you not, various clicks of students that include coffee addicts, cowboys, and white kids heavy into the reggae and love Bob Marley. Whaaaat?? This is the most fascinating school I've ever seen in film! It was really damn funny too, and it doesn't feel dated at all I mean I was wondering if this came out before or after A Knight's Tale, I thought it was that recent! And the characters I like to, I must really give the film some praise that there are the usual roles of your standard high school movie, you got the geeks, the popular girls, the jocks, and the rebels however each main character in those categories aside from the jocks who are still massive braying jackasses all have time devoted to them and we learn more about them. It's not a Mean Girls situation where every popular chick is the spawn of Beelzebub himself, and the geeks aren't just technically spoken awkward guys who need some sex, and the rebels aren't just people trying to throw it on the ground and proclaim they're not part of this system but the movie shows them as people both good and horrible. And I'm not gonna lie, Heath Ledger is pretty spectacular in this movie, he has such charisma and charm, I mean no wonder people loved him so much, I was practically man crushing hard on him. It shows he could do pretty much any role and is further testament as to why people still talk about his performances to this day. Julia Stiles is wonderful and actually has some great material to work with and she nails it! My boy Joseph Gordon Levitt being a big smoothie in this movie too, so that's two Gotham boys in search of romance. I think I especially like Larisa Oleynik as the uppity popular sister probably because she's way more than that, yes she's a royal pain, yes she's kinda spoiled and waaaay too self-centered, but it shows a lot more of her actual character that further drives my point of the characters being like real people, maybe not my favorite character but I was very pleased the way they handled her. I also really loved, what I personally think is the meaning of the movie, this one scene where our main girl and guy basically say that you should live the life that you want, and to not let anyone try to tell you who you are supposed to be. There's great wisdom in that scene for every age group out there and really should be seen at least once. The soundtrack was also not half bad, in fact I really digged the soundtrack for the most part, with a pretty grand singing scene with Heath thrown in. And that's why I loved it so much, this movie can take some pretty out there steps and creates this bizarre, funny, and very no frills world and yet have people act like real people. I really enjoyed this movie, it was highly entertaining, great fun to reminisce, and very funny. You should absolutely check this one out. I totally had friends like our main girl and guy Kat and Patrick, which is funny because I was the most vanilla good kid you could possibly ever see and yet I had friends who smoked pot, and sometimes drank, and were completely doing their own thing but still were like the punk group of the school and I really wouldn't want anything different. I couldn't even count how many times me and my friends would utterly bitch each other out and hate each other but 5 minutes later we get over and hang out again, very much like our main couple. It's still very identifiable to this day, and while high school wasn't even close to what you see in the movies for me, I still like to think it was a very good experience. Even if I didn't go to prom or get a girlfriend. And before I go have an emotional episode that's all for today. Until tomorrow!
