“10 Things I Hate” about this premise

Sometimes, the ABC Family channel manages to surprise the old and jaded A&E critic with what is essentially a dumb, teen-targeted trifle (“Greek“) that’s a fun-to-watch guilty pleasure. Or, they veer toward the preachy and the cringe-laden, like “Secret Life of the American Teenager,” with its new “I had sex and my dad died as a result!” storyline. But then, just as the wholesome channel worms its way into viewers’ good graces, they hit you with a bombshell. This time, they dipped their squeaky clean fingers into the teen movie golden era of 1998-1999 and chose not “She’s All That,” nor “Can’t Hardly Wait,” but the best of the genre (arguably), “10 Things I Hate About You” for a TV recreation.
Remember the old Friday night retread of “Clueless?” We prefer to forget it, too. For the most part, TV shows based on movies don’t work, and from the looks of it, this new “10 Things” is doomed to fall Prada backpack over Sketchers sneakers.
Like its film predecessor, the cast is comprised of mostly young unknowns, none too attractive. A couple have Disney and Nickelodeon pasts, but none of them are in line to be the next Miley Cyrus. The movie’s writer and director are on board, as is Larry Miller, who played Kat and Bianca’s overprotective dad, but from the clips released by ABC Family, that spark ignited by Julia Stiles/Heath Ledger/Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Larisa Oleynik can’t be relit, no matter how hard these fresh faces try.
Plus, what’s the point of bringing back a relic from the ’90s to today’s teenybop audience? Sure, there’s always relevance to be found in Shakespeare’s timeless tales, and our generation has a certain level of nostalgia for the original. But the ABC Family show isn’t targeted at 20-somethings, but instead at a demographic that knows Heath Ledger as the Joker, not the crooning bad boy Patrick Verona. The whole strategy seems like making a starless, dumbed-down version of the original for a generation who doesn’t remember the movie.
The movie’s unofficial theme song, Letters to Cleo’s “I Want You to Want Me” has been redone in the slick, over-produced style favored by tweens today by some girly five-piece called KSM.
That late-’90s brand of sarcasm just cannot be recreated for today. Sadly, it seems as though the undercurrent of not-that-innocence which ran through the movie will be x’ed out in favor of ABC Family’s, well, family-friendly requirements.
Lindsey Price is not attractive enough to grab attention, the first failing of a show based on high school popularity and dynamics. Julia Stiles wasn’t particularly gorgeous, but she had charisma that Price seemingly lacks, no matter how witty and snarky she tries to be. The way Kat has been styled is horrendous. Apparently, wearing tights with your shorts, an unflattering combination of cardigan and vest, and never taking off your black beanie hat make you “different.” She listens to MPR, reads the paper, and yes, even mentions Kim Jong Il. Bianca is a 1D bubblehead of the highest order, and she better get some depth before the critics get their knives out.
None of these teen actors can match their predecessors, and that’s the problem. The writers are grasping at straws. The kid playing Cameron is authentically awkward as a kid with a crush, his voice all wavery and jittery, but it’s the awkward that makes you feel bad, not charmed.
The dialogue tries to be snappy, particularly in exchanges between “sassy” Kat and “soulful bad boy” Patrick, but since television doesn’t carry a rating system that anyone pays attention to, and there’s no ticket taker at the TV station, the way these characters talk isn’t how real 16-year-olds converse at all. No matter how many motorcycles he rides or how inky black his hair is, real 16-year-old boys don’t behave as “darkly romantic” as the writers want Patrick to come off.
Too many pop culture references abound and fail to impress, though I’m hoping Bianca’s “You’re really smiling with your eyes” to the (far from Andrew Keegan awesome) Joey 2.0 was an “America’s Next Top Model” nod.
The big question is: How on earth do the writers plan to drag the plot of a 90-minute film into a TV series? Though in the world of teenybop romantic-dramedys like “Gossip Girl” and the aforementioned “Greek,” it’s easy to take an entanglement and drag it out for episodes upon episodes. Hopefully “10 Things” doesn’t last long enough for a Bianca pregnancy scare. Don’t kill our nostalgia, please, ABC.