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Review by Susan Granger
1½ stars out of 4
Writer/director Roger Kumble has transposed Choderlos de
Laclos's 18th century French novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," which
became a movie called "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988), into Manhattan's
teenage uppercrust, where two wealthy, manipulative step-siblings
(Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe) specialize in emotional
cruelty and betrayal within their prep school. When Gellar's dumped by
her beau for a naive girl (Selma Blair), Phillippe wickedly seduces
the awkward interloper, deliberately ruining her reputation. But that
conquest was easy, so, in a nasal, whining voice, Gellar challenges
the strutting Phillippe to a diabolical wager. Can he seduce the new
headmaster's virginal daughter (Reese Witherspoon) who has written an
article for "Seventeen" magazine about how she intends to stay pure
until marriage? If he wins, Gellar agrees to have sex with him. If he
loses, he must give her his vintage 1956 Jaguar convertible. How
vindictive, perverse and callow can you get? In Christopher Hampton's
"Dangerous Liaisons," Glenn Close and John Malkovich were, at least,
sophisticated adults, even though their behavior was sinister and
vicious at a time when a woman's "reputation" was crucial to her very
existence. In this exploitative film, which is peppered with
profanity, snide, silly, spoiled brats are behaving like...well,
snide, silly, spoiled brats, and the parlor game plot unfolds more
like the recent "She's All That," in which a guy bets he can get a
girl, gets her, and then realizes he loves her after all. And, as if
that weren't enough, here there are self-consciously incongruous
subplots involving homosexuality and inter-racial sex. On the Granger
Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Cruel Intentions" is a ridiculous, fumbling
4. It's a lame, trashy teenage soap opera.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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out of 4
