Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles reluctantly begin a romance in 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You. Very, very loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew, the screenplay makes little sense and is filled with half-thoughts and cliche contrivances but Ledger and Stiles are both very charming.
Larry Miller is also good as Stiles' father who won't let his other, friendlier daughter, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), date unless Kat (Stiles) does first. But unlike the father in Shakespeare's play, he doesn't actually want either one of them to find a mate.
Instead of taking the project of conditioning a hateful woman into being an upstanding component of normal society, Patrick (Ledger) has to be paid to take Kat out. Of course this is kept a secret from her and, as per normal hackneyed romantic comedy logic, you know the whole time she's going to eventually find out and then they're eventually going to make up. It's so inevitable, it doesn't create tension, it just hangs dully over every scene like a big utility bill you know you're going to have to pay at the end of the month.
I was surprised by a good musical sequence featuring Ledger and Stiles has a nice drunken dance scene. There are a couple of oddly absurdist jokes that feel way out of place, like when Bianca accidentally shoots someone in archery class and just ignores the man falling over in pain. In English class, a teacher orders Kat out of the classroom when she says she likes an assignment he'd come up with. It really felt like the screenwriters had seen some good movies but didn't understand context for some kinds of humour. It's like if When Harry Met Sally became a Monty Python sketch at random moments. Not that this movie is ever as good as When Harry Met Sally.
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