10 things i hate about you (gil junger, 1999)

This is the thirty-third and final film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 33 is called "Party Like It's 1999 Week":

Capping off the 9th Annual Letterboxd Season Challenge with a celebration of what many consider the best movie year ever, 1999. If you haven't seen all the classics like The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, or Magnolia, now's a great time to catch up with them. And if you have, there are plenty of other gems to discover.

This week's challenge is to watch a film from 1999.

It's a bit odd to be celebrating the end of another Letterboxd Challenge here, because while this is indeed the end of the line, Week 33, I watched and wrote about 10 Things I Hate About You back in October. Anticipating a month in Spain in April, I watched the last five films in the Challenge long before our trip, knowing I wouldn't have the chance to watch them as they turned up on the Challenge calendar. So this post, and the four previous ones, are all post-dated.

I think I'm the wrong age/generation for this movie. It's about high-school kids in 1999, and I'm 70, and in 1999 I was 46. It's true that high school remains a common experience for many of us who grew up in the U.S. ... there are things we can identify with, no matter our age or generation. Nonetheless, I didn't connect with 10 Things I Hate About You, which is a take on The Taming of the Shrew. Certainly not the way I locked into Bottoms. Maybe it's the simple fact that 10 Things walks a line that allowed it to get a PG-13 rating, while Bottoms was aggressively R. The Kate stand-in (she's called Kat in this one) is never really a shrew. In fact, she's quite reasonable, although that means she's anti-social in the terms that high school works.

The movie introduces us to some actors who went on to impressive careers. Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles were up-and-comers in 1999. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was better known, since he had a regular role on a popular TV show, but like his co-stars, he was still young and in the early part of his career. All three are good in 10 Things. But the movie isn't much, although don't listen to me ... it did OK at the box office, and Stiles won an MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Female Performance. The soundtrack is good ... I'd play it before I watched this movie again. Ultimately, 10 Things I Hate About You is like a pilot episode for a TV series, and in fact, while it took 10 years, it did finally become a series.

A summary of my 9th Annual Challenge:

Best Movie: Secrets & Lies

Worst Movie: Inherit the Wind

Longest Movie: Secrets & Lies

Shortest Movie: Black Girl

Most Popular Movie: Call Me by Your Name

Most Obscure Movie: The Lady in Red

Most Highly-Regarded Movie: Secrets & Lies

Least Highly-Regarded Movie: Smile