10 Things I Hate About You: 10 things we love to hate about this film
By Becky Kukla
Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Photo Credit: Touchstone Pictures
But mostly, we hate the way we don’t hate you
Not even close.
Not even a little bit,
not even at all.
It may be completely misguided (especially in the year 2019), we can’t bring ourselves to really hate on 10 Things I Hate About You. It gave us baby Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Heath Ledger singing, and (despite all our reservations) one of the best love stories of the 1990s.
Maybe we shouldn’t find it so hard, but 10 Things will probably have to stay a pleasure for most of us who watched it when it first came out in 1999.
We’re not ready to give it up just yet. We will never not love the paint-balling scene, Walter asking Kat if she made anyone cry today or Heath Ledger putting his hand straight through a Bunsen Burner (tough boys, am I right?). Most of all though: we will always love Bianca and Kat’s sisterhood, cemented when she gives Joey a final kick where the sun doesn’t shine. Girl power never looked better.
10 quotes we'll never forget from 10 Things I Hate About You. light. Related Story
It might not win any awards now for being progressive (it might win a few for being regressive) but 10 Things I Hate About You is still iconic. Happy 20th anniversary!