This week’s episode of Hard Ticket pits classic teen movies 10 Things I Hate About You and American Pie against each other. It’s a fairly lopsided matchup, however, and I think a more fair bout could have been arranged between 10 Things I Hate About You and something more prestigious, like Survachelors.
10 Things I Hate About You is a cult classic long form video essay and is required viewing in most nationally accredited CPR courses. It is also, as mentioned in the podcast, a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Unlike any of the productions overseen by the Bard himself, this movie features Heath Ledger as the sexy shrew tamer in question. The first time I saw this movie, I thought it was an origin story to his character in The Dark Knight, and was very interested to learn how he got those scars. What I found instead was the charming story of a young woman whose father is obsessed with her virginity. And I’m sure she will eventually have to unpack with her therapist how she got those (emotional) scars.
Speaking of things that might scar young women, let’s talk about American Pie, and its proto-incel cast. Genuinely, fucking a pie is the most ethical thing Jason Biggs’s character does in the entire movie. And don’t even get me started on the questions they asked on the podcast about which of the characters to this movie they would date. How about none of them? Because they’re children? I don’t wanna say that Jeffrey is a pedophile but I’m just saying he’s been awfully quiet about releasing the Epstein files…
Inevitably, I think 10 Things I Hate About You takes the cake, and not just because of what happened to the pie. It’s aged a lot better and Heath Ledger is hot. Jason Biggs doesn’t give me butterflies in my stomach like Heath—he gives me a singular dung beetle somewhere in the vicinity of my gall bladder. He’s also raised some questions about how one would clean cherry pie filling out of their urethra. Thought-provoking cinema indeed.
Hard Flickit 