Remaking, and especially modernizing, a classic is a delicate business. It's terribly easy, when bringing old truths into modern idiom, to fall so far into the pool of popular culture as to lose depth, or to work so hard at making an old story accessible to a young audience that the result is pure tedium for all ages.
In 1999, She's All That, a very loose and unacknowledged update of Pygmalion, gave us a perfect example of this kind of failure. Thankfully, however, the same year brought us this movie, 10 Things I Hate About You, an update/remake of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew - and a great example of how to do it right.
Ever since my parents took me to see The Taming of the Shrew when I was eight years old, I've had kind of a love/hate thing going on with it. I've loved the humor, the cleverness, and the fact that everybody who deserves happiness and love gets it in the end. The parts I've hated are, first, the part where Kate is privately humiliated, and then the part where she has to appear subservient to her husband, even though she does it for love. Without spoiling it for you, I can tell you this is not quite what happens in 10 Things I Hate About You.
And guess what? When you strip away all the business and temporal context, this is also the message of 10 Things I Hate About You! Of course, it's been put into modern context, young language and dress. And I love the fact that this version has also been thoroughly adapted to the modern consciousness that a young woman can learn this stuff herself, just by being smart and true to herself, and without being forced there by a bunch of men. I also love the way that the boys in this version of the story have to go through the same painful process and learn the same lessons. But all the best elements of the original - the timeless truth, the humour, the cleverness, and the just deserts - remain intact.
The really cool thing about this version, though, is something I don't remember from the original. In 10 Things, we really get to watch all the main characters grow up. We get to watch them make choices, right and wrong, hurt each other, heal each other, and learn. We get to watch them all become more human.