[Movie] 10 Things I Hate About You Review

10 things I hate about you is a 1999 teenage romantic comedy starring Heath ledger (A Knight’s Tale, The Dark Knight) and Julia Stiles (Save the Last Dance, The Bourne Ultimatum). It is a retelling of the Shakespeare play ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ with a (for the time) modern twist.

The film tells the story of Katarina and Bianca Stratford, two sisters who are constantly arguing and are the exact opposite of each other. Bianca is the most popular girl in school and is admired by many whilst Katarina (Kat) is a rebel who is constantly bickering and considered by many of her classmates as a ‘Heinous bitch’. Kat and Bianca’s overprotective father had a rule; neither of his daughters were allowed to date, but he later changed this rule. Bianca is now allowed to date when Kat does. Kat refuses to date just because her sister wants her too so she can go out with the most popular boy in school; Joey. Another boy, Cameron, also wants to date Bianca. Cameron’s friend, Michael, convinces Joey, who wants to go out with Bianca too, to pay another boy, Patrick, to date Kat so that Joey can date Bianca, but Joey doesn’t realise that Cameron wants to date Bianca and that he has been conned. Bianca starts to realise that Joey may not be the man for him and Patrick, despite having a rough start, starts to fall for Kat and let real love stand in the way of business. Hilarity ensue

10 Things I Hate About You is a very funny film. There are a few jokes that don’t turn out the way they should or are just not funny, but most of the time the humour succeeds. I especially like the overprotective father of Kat and Bianca; Dr. Stratford. Some of the things that come out of his mouth are comedy gold, like his Dawson’s Creek Reference, or the fake stomach and breasts dubbed ‘The Belly’ which he makes his daughters wear so that they know what it feels like to be carrying the weight of a baby.

Of course, with every romantic comedy comes a serious side too and although these scenes aren’t anything special, the film still doesn’t do too badly when it comes to these parts. They keep the story going but don’t appear too often, which is probably a good thing, seeing as though comedy is the main focus of the fil

Most of the music in 10 Things I Hate About you is 90’s rock music. I personally like this type of music a lot but I didn’t find myself enjoying the music in this film so much. It may have been the fact that most of the music was more female indie rock, which I am not as big a fan of, but this is just my opinion and others will probably either like or dislike the soundtrack more than me. For this type of music it isn’t too bad. I really like some of the other music such as ‘One Week’ by the Barenaked Ladies which appears right at the beginning of the film.

It’s thanks to this film that Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles have become such popular actors and it’s no surprise since all of the actors and actresses do a great job and are very funny to watch. As a comedy, 10 Things I Hate About You is a pretty good film, but other than that there isn’t much too keep you entertained. I recommend renting this as once you get sick of the jokes, you’ll probably get sick of the film to. I give it 8 out of 10.