Cruel Intentions (1999)

Directed by Roger Kumble. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair, Sean Patrick Thomas, Christine Baranski, Joshua Jackson, Eric Mabius, Louise Fletcher, Swoosie Kurtz. [R]

Contemporary update of the famed Pierre Choderlos de Laclos novel, set this time among the wealthy teenager crowd—the credits state that this is “suggested by the novel ‘Les Liasions Dangereuse’,” but “suggested by the CliffsNotes summary” would be more accurate. All the savage wit and intricate maneuvers of the original story are gone, replaced by spoiled snobbery and unconcealed nastiness; how can anyone relish the cruel games when the script so frequently tries for easy laughs and unearned sincerity? The novel, play, and prior adaptations were depicting cynical people, but it’s the depiction itself that’s cynical here. The cheap and moralizing plot developments in the last twenty minutes or so ring especially false. The cast is certainly attractive but hardly up to the Herculean task of making these Bret Easton Ellis-rejects interesting, but at least Blair and Baranski earn a few chuckles as an implausibly dim naif and her bigoted WASP mother respectively.

29/100