Cruel Intentions #1

Wow, I can't believe you hated it. :lol: I was still a kid the first time I saw it yet after it was over it just gave me this feeling. I can't really explain it. I loved it and still do.
 
I hated this movie when I first watched it.

The hype was nuts, everyone in our school was obsessed, I tell ya, OBSESSED with it (not to mention the Verve song at the end, "Bittersweet Symphony", that song was SO overplayed). When I finally bought the movie to watch it I was expecting The Godfather of teen movies. :lol: Even my aunt when she saw I was going to watch it told me she had loved it. My aunt was in her late 30s (NOT a teen) and she has great taste, I thought, "this is going to ****** rock!"

So of course I hated it. :lol:

Then, when the hype died and everything was normal I rewatched it and didn't hate it. Now I really like it and can see what everyone responded to back then. Which was that raw badness, the will to be a bad person and feeling good about it. Nobody wants a friend like that but watching it unfold was quite brutal and somehow fascinating. To watch people like that behave so horribly.

It made me feel good about being me. :D

PS: My aunt loved 10 things I hate about you like crazy so she pretty much knows where is at when it comes to teen and tween movies. My aunt rocks. :D Eh, I miss my teenage years.
 
I think we're on the same page. Because I so wanted to like this movie. The actors were all very strong and, at first anyway, the different characters were so well-defined.

But, yeah, a teenager giving her virginity like that, when it was so important to her before? And the revelation that Kathryn did drugs wouldn't have been any kind of real shocker or humiliation for her. They would have carted her off to rehab and that would have been that. Where's the big comeuppance there?

And Sebastian's redemption, while I loathed the idea of it (what can I say, in fiction, I like me a bad boy), would have been much more believable if we had seen a process of it.

But that's me. I may actually stop posting on here because I feel I have no right to diss the movie. So many people liked it and who am I to disrupt that, you know? Besides, it's just my opinion.
 
Thanks for starting a thread for this movie. Im going to add it to the main thread guide so we know we have a thread for this movie.

I really liked this movie, mainly because I loved Sebastian and Annette together.
 
The reason Sebastian dies is because that is how "La Liason' Dangerous" ends.

It is also his character arc. He finally learns how to really care about someone, but of course, it is too late. Poetic irony/justice and all that.
 
Sarah Michelle Gellar deserved a lot more credit for the amazing job she did in that movie. I thought she was absolutely wonderful, and it was definitely one of her best acting roles. Kathryn was a great character for her to play. Just so cunning and wicked... I loved her.
 
As a study in film, CI is text-book in how to do something of this nature correctly on almost all levels, both artistic and technical.

The story is a modern-day adaptation of "Les Liasons Dangerous" (Dangerous Liasons) set in the high society world of New York among teens. The script itself is deserves study because it does everything efficiently and effortlessly unlike a lot of adaptations which try too hard to acknowledge the original source matrerial and up seeming forced.

Also, the film itself is a text-book example of how you don't need a 100 million dollars to produce something of quality. CI's budget was only 5-6 million dollars (including actors, director and locations) yet the film looks like it costs 30+ million simply because of the way it is shot and using the limited locations to their fullest.

If more films would follow CI's pattern... That is, smaller stories with smaller budgets, but semi-big stars... Hollywood wouldn't be in the financial trouble it is now. CI proves beyond a shadow of a doubt a good story and proper execution of that story is what really counts and what people will respond to as CI is now part of our popular culture AND has a huge cult-following among not just teens, but fans of Dangerous Liasons adaptations and it didn't even cost 1/10th of something like Pirates of the Caribbean, or Mission Impossible III (both $200+ million films).
 
^^I remeber listening to the commentary and hearing the director talk about that. I'm glad they used the ending they did. I mean, it sucked that Sebastian died, and even the director mentioned that the film probably would've made 30 million dollars more if he were kept alive, but the Kathryn/Bittersweet Symphony song scene was so great. That's probably one of my favorite scenes I've ever seen in a movie.
 
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Ah, yes. "Damgerous Liasons in High School" :D

This was one of those "Shakespere-goes-90210" movies that were all the rage back in the late '90s along with "10 Things I Hate About You" (Taming of the Shrew) and the inevitable "Romeo & Juliet".

What I like about the film is it is basically a low-budget film that looks like it was made for millions of dollars. The director's commentary tells how small a budget this film actually had once it was greenlighted and the fact it was greenlit based soley on the strength of the script alone (written by the director as his first foray into feature films).

The best scene in the film is the finale with "Bittersweet Symphony" when Kathryn gets her cumuppance. The producers said this cost almost 1/2 of the budget to get the rights to this song. They tried similar songs and even a cheap cover-band version of it, but they insisted do it right, or don't do it at all and it paid off. Also, the actual ending sequence wasn't as dramatic as Annete confronts Kathryn, but doesn't publish the journal. Instead, she blackmails her into being her personal slave by making her do a lot of community service projects and donating a lot of her money to worthy causes -- Something which Kathryn's character would find hellish... But still not as dramatic as the current ending with "Bittersweet Symphony".
 
I love this movie so much. It seems to be a consensus that the soundtrack is amazing so I'll just add my two cents as well. It really is a must buy! I first saw this movie because SMG was in it but I am so glad that I did because of the quality of the movie, simply amazing.
 
Sarah Michelle Gellar did a really good job as Kathyrn. I know Cruel Intentions wasn't Oscar calibur but it was a decent film. No one ever praised Sarah for doing a good job as the bad girl. The only thing she got praised for was kissing Selma Blair in the movie.
 
This was one of my favorite movies when it came out! I was a huge SMG fan and loved seeing her in a character different than Buffy. I also loved the soundtrack, still listen to it all of the time, a definate classic!
 
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