Mourning the romantic comedy: 26 years since ‘10 Things I Hate About You’

The year is 1999: Kate Moss is gracing the catwalks, Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca” is blaring on all the radios, SpongeBob SquarePants has just been introduced to the world and, above all else, the romantic comedy genre is alive and thriving. If you are not familiar with “10 Things I Hate About You,” please allow me to quickly educate you.

With mermaid curls that make her look fresh out of a pre-Raphaelite painting and a minimalist style, Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) immediately gets female audiences scrolling on Pinterest (not like that is something that she would do). Viewers watch her read the likes of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” completely in her own universe. 

Now, let me get something straight. This is not your generic, run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, this is THE romantic comedy. Patrick Verona  (Heath Ledger) — the misunderstood, reclusive bad boy — is tasked with asking out the fierce, witty Kat Stratford  — who stands for all things unconventional. 

Kat’s lack of interest in social conventions is weaponized by her highly protective father, who decides that Kat’s younger sister, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), can only date once Kat does, which hits home for any of the younger siblings out there who found themselves in a similar situation. The movie pays homage to teenage innovation at its finest when Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an adorable new student who wants to date Bianca, pays Patrick to get Kat to go out with him. The audience then becomes consumed in the push-and-pull dynamic between the two protagonists, the conclusion of which I will leave for you to find out. 

We constantly hear that films like this are just not made anymore, and I hate to say that I agree. For decades, the romantic comedy genre was full of meaningful love stories that felt like Shakespearean sonnets and plays. In fact, this movie is loosely based on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” something it hints at throughout via various Shakespeare references, like by referring to Shakespeare's home (Stratford) and the setting of “Romeo and Juliet,” his most famous romantic play (Verona.)

The 2010s onward have suffered a drought of this kind of clever, genuine romcom. Nowadays, particularly due to streaming wars-induced hyperproduction, everyone and their mothers is releasing romantic comedies with no true substance. I felt myself losing brain cells as I watched “A Family Affair,” which saw Nicole Kidman lose an equal amount of aura points as her on-screen character pursued her daughter’s much younger boss in a mind-numbing series of events. These are filler movies, not the kind of movies that dreams are made of. 

However, there is some hope for the future of the genre. Without knowing it, many of us recently engaged with an adaptation of a different Shakespearean story. If you gave in to the Glen Powell, Sydney Sweeney propaganda (not the easiest faces to say no to) for their movie “Anyone but You”, then you witnessed a loose adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing.” 

Shakespeare’s plays have the rare ability to draw together comedy, romance and tragedy: the essential ingredients for a romcom, that, if placed in the hands of the right director, is a foolproof formula for a wonderful film. The entire trope of “enemies to lovers,” for example, pioneered by “Much Ado About Nothing,” inspired the likes of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” and “The Proposal.” Maybe Shakespeare, and Shakespeare-inspired works like “Ten Things I Hate About You,” will be the unlikely hero of the romcom genre after all.