10 Most Inspirational Teen Movies Of All Time
6. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
“You embarrassed the girl. Sacrifice yourself on the altar of dignity and even the score.”
On the face of it, 10 Things I Hate About you is a typical teen flick about high school kids messing with each other’s lives: bruised feelings, house parties that cannot end well, happy endings and a decent college rock soundtrack to cross-promote with cable TV.
Julia Stiles’s Kat is an independent, no nonsense firebrand, creative and artistic with zero tolerance for bullsh*t. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Cameron wants to date Kat’s younger sister Bianca, but Bianca’s father, hilariously over-protective, has decreed that Bianca may date only when Kat does: Kat is so famously dismissive of the idea that he believes that this will never happen.
Cameron hires charismatic bad lad Patrick (an engaging Heath Ledger in the role that made him a star) to seduce Kat in order to circumvent the paternal ruling, but Patrick ends up falling for her precisely because she makes it so bloody difficult for him, knocking back his most assured material, forcing him to think on his feet and try sincerity for a change.
10 Things I Hate About You isn’t just some brainless high school skit. Kat and Bianca don’t trick their father into changing his mind, they prove to him by example that that he was wrong not to trust that they could take care of themselves, and each other.
Meanwhile, Patrick and Cameron’s friendship allows each to shore up the weakness of the other: Patrick’s confidence buttresses Cameron’s self-destructive insecurity, while Cameron’s sensitivity leavens Patrick’s aggressive alpha male ego.
These teenagers are in the process of becoming adults, not remaining mired in childhood. The film is interested in showcasing their independence and their agency, their control over their own lives without the prescriptive demands of their parents micromanaging everything they do.