10 Things I Hate About You Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 105 Ratings

  • Starring: Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles
  • Summary: A re-telling of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," set in a modern-day Seattle high school.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 26
  2. Negative: 1 out of 26
  1. 100
    Lutz's dialogue is consistently sharp and snappy, and the large cast forms a sparkling ensemble under Junger's adept direction.
  2. Reviewed by: Ron Wells
    80
    Of all the teen films released this year, this one is, by far, the best.
  3. Reviewed by: John Hartl
    60
    Unfailingly energetic, 10 Things is like a puppy that can't stop wagging its tail, begging for attention...Even more than "Cruel Intentions," this movie plays like an awkward high-school production of a classic.
  4. It wimped out by blanding down the story and the characters to the point where she isn't really a shrew and he isn't really a maniac.

See all 26 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 24
  3. Negative: 1 out of 24
  1. AliceM.
    10
    Relates to children of this era and tells them the story of Taming of the Shrew in a modern world. If Shakespeare was here today he would of approved most probably! Expand
  2. I'm not normally one for Romantic teen movies, but I really enjoyed this movie.

    The whole cast do a great job, but special praise has to go t
    o Heath Ledger, who sadly is no longer with us. He's great in this movie, as is the rest of the cast.

    Larisa Oleynik looks absolutely stunning in this movie, and you can see why its a case of love at first site for Cameron.
    Expand
  3. I just really enjoy this movie. It's fun to see some well known actors (Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, and Joseph-Gordon Levitt) in earlier roles. It's a fun adaptation of the beloved Bill Shakespeare play. A good date movie, because both man and woman can get something out of it. Expand
  4. I resisted seeing this film for a long time, and to be honest I've no idea why. 10 Things I Hate About You is relatively self-aware for a highschool rom-com, and affectionately pokes fun at some of the genre's most annoying cliches. It also has a wacky comic energy and some hilarious dialogue which is the perfect mix of the bright and verbally dexterous and the very, very crude. There are decent performances across the cast, particularly from the effortlessly natural Julia Stiles and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Heath Ledger as a borderline sociopathic rebel-turned-lover-boy. Allison Janney is also brilliant as the entertainingly filthy school counsellor and aspiring erotica writer. It makes a refreshing change for a teenage comedy film to have a believably-aged cast, though the key players were aged 18-20 when the film was made, at least they weren't in their late twenties or early thirties as they sometimes are in Hollywood highschool films. Where the film pleasingly has its own identity for most its run-time, it does disappointingly sink to the level of every other teenage romantic comedy in its final act. At this point it feels a little like screenwriting pair Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith ran out of interesting ideas and just delivered all the soppy stuff you come to expect from this kind of film. And though Ledger is delivers a good performance, his accent is all over the place, and this is accounted for with some clumsy exposition about his character spending his early life in Australia. It might have been a little less jarring if Ledger stuck to one dialect or the other. Despite a generic ending and a couple of story elements that don't quite work, 10 Things I Hate About You is a smart, fun, heart-warming and hilarious romantic comedy, and this is coming from someone who doesn't really like romantic comedies. Expand

See all 24 User Reviews