By: Marina Yang
This is my review on ‘10 Things I Hate About You’. ‘10 Things I Hate About You’, is directed by Gil Junger, produced by Andrew Lazar, and written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith. Our main characters consist of Bianca and Kat Stratford (sisters), Patrick Verona (acquainted with Kat), Cameron James (acquainted with Bianca) and the antagonist Joey Donner.
The movie is an early 2000s romance movie that revolves around two developing relationships with problems to overcome, inside the relationships and out. It all starts off with Cameron, who is a new student, who sees Bianca and crushes on her hard. There’s another thing though, she’s boy crazy for another dude named Joey. Also, Bianca is under a new rule where she can’t date unless her sister Kat is too. This seemed easy for Cameron to fix until he realized who her sister was, a total ‘loser’ who isn’t interested in boys or relationships. He ends up finding a fitting candidate for the job, of dating Kat, in Patrick.
I found this movie to be an emotional ride, it had its ups and downs, cringey moments and a little tears, but overall I found it pretty sweet. It has the old-school romance a lot of people romanticize and admire, really capturing the lover-boy and hard to get girl relationship dynamic.
Besides just the romance, it briefly covers the changes Kat goes through from middle-school to high-school, expressing the truth behind her “rebellious” act in the movie. Teaching people the importance and impacts of pushing yourself to fit into an/or someone’s image of you, and diving into something you’re not ready for. Which I feel is valuable to a certain crowd who dreams for a relationship, and romanticizes all the cute acts in these kinds of romcoms.
Though, I don’t think they truly know how differently this generation has changed over time, we’ve grown into a generation where it’s normal to ask people out via text or phone number, etc., not any love letters or devoting themselves through a song.
Besides that, I’d give it a 4.5/5. It’s good in my book, but I may just not have enough pages to really consider it a finalized product/book to truly read and believe. What I really like about this movie though is the ending, Kat says something truly heart-warming yet sad in the moment, showing how much she cherished the time they shared together.
You can watch ’10 Things I Hate About you’ on Netflix or Disney+, or rent it on other streaming services.
