Analyzing The Movie '10 Things I Hate About You'

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Hatred and love, two of humanity’s strongest feelings. In many cases people consider them opposites, but the line between them is thin. In the movie “10 Things I Hate About You,” by Gil Junger, Junger tries to show the thinness of this line. This follows the footsteps of Shakespeare, whose play, The Taming of the Shrew, from which the movie is adapted. This movie was very interesting in its portrayal of the play, but does have a few errors or ways that it could improve. The movie, “10 Things I Hate About You,” was released in 1999 as a romantic comedy. It tells the story of Kat Stratford, played by Julia Styles, and Patrick Verona’s, played by Heath Leger, romance, along with the romance of Kat’s sister Bianca and Cameron James. The story …show more content…

One example of this is seen in the plot. I did not agree with the way that Junger finished the movie. As a character Cat would not let Patrick off so easily. I realize its purpose was to more closely tie it to the play, but I feel like it moved the movie farther from the play by breaking the character of Cat or Katherine. While in this way I feel like the play was too prominent, I very much enjoyed the usage of lines from the play being cut into the movie. The slipping in of lines, in my opinion, was a very interesting way to integrate Shakespeare's original work and keep the attention of the audience. I also enjoyed the casting and feel like the actors and actresses casted for each roll understood the position in the movie and also its relation to the play. I particularly enjoyed the performance of lead actress, Julia Stiles, in the role of Cat. I feel like she very clearly performed the fire and resilience of Cat in her portrayal, but also maintained the hidden fact that Cat does want to find happiness and go out and do things, just on her terms. Overall I feel like the dialogue and delivery of almost all lines was spot on with the quirky kind of love that Junger was trying to display. The usage quick retorts by Cat and Patrick not only showed similarity to that of Katherine and Petruchio, but also showed that these two character are the definition of a love-hate relationship. The final comment I made on this adaptation was on the music. While I greatly enjoyed the music and its place in the movie, I never quite felt like it tied into the theme or tone of the movie or play. It was obviously placed there as a way for Junger to connect to the audience of the day. There are a multitude of things that I enjoyed and disliked about the movie other than these small list, but I feel like

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