How do these high school kids get into bars on weeknights? How old is Patrick Verona? Why is Julia Stiles a better dancer here than in Save the Last Dance?
How these high schoolers get into bars on weeknights, and how old Patrick Verona is, since he could be 19 or 36; he took a year off because his grandfather was sick, and is drinking beer in the open and playing pool at the bar where he is recruited for the job.
There are a lot of bars for a high school movie, perhaps a Pacific Northwest nod or 16-and-over clubs like the limelight; the Letters to Cleo venue is suspiciously well lit and clean with a Hollywood sheen, and a father who forbids dating would not allow a Tuesday show, though its all-women crowd at Club Skunk might make it a safe space given his stated worries.
Flagged earlier as an unanswerable question: why Stiles is a much better dancer here than in Save the Last Dance, with tequila offered as the answer.
The montage-y scenes are funniest: Julia Stiles playing electric guitar with headphones on, something only a 50-year-old at Guitar Center does, while Heath Ledger walks up and stares at her, and Bianca moping in a tire swing with a cut back to Kat's face.
The bar scenes also hold many unintentionally comic moments, which leads the hosts to merge unintentional comedy with unanswerable questions.
Asked whether this is anyone's apex, the first answer is a hedged 'I mean, I guess Andrew Keegan', which another turn firms up as both his heat check performance and his apex, congratulating him for going out on top.
For Julia Stiles, two hosts call Save the Last Dance her apex, despite one taking issue with her dancing, while a third puts this film over Save the Last Dance.
Stiles is outshined by Heath Ledger here, and Sean Patrick Harris (as transcribed) does not bring it the same way in Save the Last Dance; that film also features an unrecognizably different Kerry Washington, identifiable only by how she over-enunciates like Olivia Pope.
Her later career is surveyed: Dexter as Lumen, the Borne (as transcribed) films that Chris Ryan would push for, The Prince and Me, the rough patch of Mona Lisa Smile and O, then Columbia and a return with State and Maine (as transcribed) and Silver Linings Playbook; she is very good at being mean.
Parts of the soundtrack, including the One Week remix and an unironic Smash Mouth cue; the school's lax discipline, from the flashing to the sausage prank, the arrow and the golf balls; Kat's crop tops and platform flip-flops
Some of the soundtrack has aged worst: the film opens with a remix of Barenaked Ladies' One Week, disputed as a remix, positioned as the popular girls' music that Kat drowns out with riot grrrl; a very unironic Smash Mouth cue feels corny, and Smash Mouth, who also covered Can't Get Enough of You Baby for Can't Hardly Wait, were a nineties soundtrack staple who no longer are.
Some soundtrack bands now read as jokes, such as Daz by Brick and Saturday Night by Tagana (as transcribed), though George Clinton and the Cardigans are also on it; one host realized they spent a lot of time with the CD as a teenager and saw Barenaked Ladies and the Cardigans at Atlanta's Jingle Ball.
Flashing a teacher to get someone out of detention would be received differently now, and the teacher would fear for his job; the school's discipline is lax overall, with Miss Perky merely telling Patrick Verona not to do it after his sausage prank on a lunch lady, Bianca shooting a teacher in the rear with an arrow, and a character firing golf balls into a crowd with no consequences.
The persistent trope of nerds getting away with things because they are smart, as in Stranger Things, appears here when Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz descend into a nerd lab like a parallel society.
Bianca's outfits are good but Julia Stiles' are poor: crop tops that are not coming back and platform flip-flops from Delia's that date it to a specific moment, though platforms are back on the market and slides were everywhere; the sisters have similar styles executed differently.
The cast is impressive: Stiles, Ledger, and Andrew Keegan, whose acting career has faded but who has fame as the leader of a Venice spiritual organization called Full Circle, covered by New York Magazine, busted by undercover agents for selling illegal kombucha and now pursuing sound healing according to a Keegan quote to Page Six.
Keegan was also in O, the Othello remake with Julia Stiles that marked the downturn of the teen Shakespeare trend; 10 Things is the highlight of a trend that started with Romeo and Juliet, and Hartnett is in O.
Kat's wokeness is ahead of its time: she slams Hemingway after someone calls him romantic, insists the Spanish Civil War matters, and delivers the line about being male and an asshole making you worthy of our time, while playing it lovable rather than as a shrill shrew. — Andrew Gruttadaro
Watching as an adult brings envy and respect for how Kat conducts her life at 17, going to weeknight shows at a bar; the film name-checks Bikini Kill and the Raincoats, bands one host only learned about recently via 20th Century Women; teenage characters rarely age this well, even if her coolness may have made her less relatable to teens.
Bianca's wardrobe, white jeans with a crop top, is back in even if the tailoring differs, and the line 'I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpacks' is both funny and prescient about a backpack renaissance.
The Lowenstein party, pinned to Julia Stiles dancing on the table to Hypnotize; Heath Ledger singing Can't Take My Eyes Off of You with the marching band in the stadium; Kat's poem at the end
The first pick is the whole Lowenstein party (Bowie Lowenstein, as transcribed), starting with the flyers thrown down the stairwell; after an objection that this selects a whole portion of the movie, the pick narrows to Julia Stiles dancing on the table to Hypnotize. — Andrew Gruttadaro
Stiles has said in several interviews that the table dance got her the role in Save the Last Dance, which is called a backhanded compliment since she is thought to be a bad dancer there, a ballerina learning hip hop in Chicago; perhaps her dancing reflects the problems of that film's premise.
The dance is remembered as the moment an older sister showed their mother as 'how teenagers dance'; it is a strong visual cue that would be a much-used gif today, memorable and awkward at once, with Kat drunk and hitting her head on the light fixture as a great coda.
The second pick is Heath Ledger dancing along to Can't Take My Eyes Off of You, played as a clip. — Amanda Dobbins
The song was learned either from this movie or from Lauryn Hill's cover released a year earlier, and only later recognized as a Frankie Valli song from the sixties; if someone says they were Heath Ledger'd, this strutting, bouncing-down-the-steps scene is the first one that comes to mind.
The hosts are asked how they would have reacted in high school to a suitor hiring the marching band for a Frankie Valli song and dancing around the stadium: one would have loved it, another would have asked for a private conversation but thinks it would have worked if they tried it.
At 33 the stadium serenade is a hard no and public confrontation is unwelcome, but the high school version of her would have been really charmed. — Amanda Dobbins
The soccer team is into the serenade and clapping, so there is little embarrassment, and Kat (Cat Stafford, as transcribed) is really moved by it, which is believable; still, no flash mobs now.
The third pick is Kat's poem at the end, which its picker often watches at a desk; the poem is played as a clip.
Asked in what circumstances the desk viewing happens, the answer is around 3:15, a little tired and vulnerable and wanting to watch someone else be vulnerable; it is a great poem that nails the rhyme at the end, took one take with natural, improvised tears, and is a movie grand gesture.
The Heath Ledger singing and the poem are both liked, along with Kat's antagonistic relationship with her teacher, who tells her to get out when she calls an assignment great.
The film came out in 1999; according to IMDb, Larissa Olenek (as transcribed) wanted to play Kat and Julia Stiles wanted to play Bianca, and a casting director swapped them, with the caveat that IMDb's sourcing is looser than Wikipedia's and the 'I wanted that role but got this one' story is a common film narrative.
Patrick Verona, Heath Ledger's first American movie role, was also desired by Ashton Kutcher and Josh Hartnett; Hartnett is dark enough to have done it, while Kutcher would have made it a different movie.
