







There’s something cosy about a late-’90s high school movie where the stakes are mostly social and the campus looks like a postcard. This one earns its keep by wearing the genre like a costume and slipping Shakespeare into the pockets — The Taming of the Shrew in a letterman jacket.
Julia Stiles is the main event. Kat’s not just “difficult”; she’s guarded, bright, and fed up with being managed. Heath Ledger’s charm is doing cardio the whole time, and that big musical gesture is still ridiculous in a pleasing way. The supporting cast keeps things buzzy, and the script has a decent hit rate.
But the plot is literally powered by a paid-dating scheme, and the film sometimes wants credit for irony without doing the hard work of critique. Enjoyable, quotable, and a bit more awkward than the nostalgia suggests.