Released just four years after 1995's disarmingly smart Clueless became a teen sleeper hit, 10 Things I Hate About You shared some of its sly, sidelong perspective on high school dynamics, not to mention its literary pedigree. Today marks 16 years since the film's US release date, meaning 10 Things has officially come of age, but its modern day screwball romance and salty humour hasn't aged a day.
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is a less widely-read source text than Jane Austen's Emma, and 10 Things is by necessity a looser adaptation than Clueless - Shrew's much-discussed ending, which concludes that women must learn to be subservient to their husbands, wouldn't fly even as irony in the present day.
Only the skeleton of Shakespeare's plot remains, and proves just how timeless the rom-com conventions which he originated have become. The overprotective father of pretty, popular high schooler Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) forbids her from dating until her antisocial older sister Kat (Julia Stiles) does too, an arrangement which inspires desperate measures from several plucky suitors.
Sharply scripted from the off by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (whose other joint credits include Legally Blonde), 10 Things features a deceptively familiar opening, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's new kid Cameron seemingly presented as our protagonist. The scene in which closeted AV geek Michael (David Krumholtz) gives Cameron a tour of the school's social cliques is just one of many times when the film turns a well-worn scenario on its head - in place of the usual jocks, nerds and cheerleaders, we get fake cowboys, white rastas and twitchy coffee kids.
It looks initially like Cameron and his yearning for "spoiled little princess" Bianca is going to be the film's focus, but affable though JGL is when he's playing lovelorn naivety, it's a relief when they're sidelined in favour of the spiky, sexy back-and-forth between Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger.
This was Ledger's breakout role in the US, and he's so effortlessly charismatic as vaguely defined "bad boy" Patrick that the shaky accent barely registers. His marching band-accompanied performance of 'Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You', performed to a reluctantly charmed Kat from the bleachers, has become almost as iconic in high school cinema as Say Anything's boombox.
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Kat's introduction is another would-be familiar beat -Â though in 1999 Joan Jett's 'Bad Reputation' wasn't yet the overplayed rebel anthem it's now become - made fresh by execution. A fan of Sylvia Plath, "angry girl music" and casual violence towards fellow students ("His testicle retrieval operation went quite well..."), she's a walking, talking collection of Angry Feminist stereotypes made loveable and vulnerable by Stiles, and contextualised well by the revelation of her popular-girl past.
Legend (read: IMDb trivia) has it that Kat's tears during the eponymous poetry-reading scene weren't scripted, which if true makes it stand out all the more in touching contrast to her abrasive tough-cookie act. Similarly her brittle devastation at the revelation that Patrick was being paid to date her brings bite to yet another familiar teen movie trope (how many variations have we seen on the "It was all a bet" reveal?).
But great as Kat and Patrick's (Katrick's?) thorny romance is, it's the array of colourful supporting players that really make 10 Things click. There are too many to single out, but special mention has to go to Allison Janney's erotica-penning guidance counsellor Ms Perky ("Bratwurst? Aren't we the optimist...") and to Daryl Mitchell's superbly unimpressed English teacher Mr Morgan ("Someday you gonna get bitch-slapped, and I'm not gonna do a thing to stop it").
With its killer indie rock soundtrack, its endless supply of visual gags you may only notice on re-watch, and its enjoyably risqué script ("Put her in your spank bank, move on..."), 10 Things I Hate About You is a deservedly beloved vestige of a now largely dormant genre. 2012 brought the somewhat baffling news that director Gil Junger was working on a "thematic sequel" entitled 10 Things I Hate About Life, which doesn't necessarily seem like a thing that needs to exist, and as yet no updates have been forthcoming.
By a stroke of pure coincidence though, next week sees the UK release of The DUFF, probably the first movie since 2010's Easy A that could justifiably be mentioned in the same breath as 10 Things, Clueless and their John Hughes forebears. In other words... if you're at a loose end this Easter weekend, may we recommend a high school movie marathon?
Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.
