Dark teen dramas were all the rage in the late '90s.
Cruel Intentions fit that mold, subverting the bubbly teen movie genre and taking its
characters into twisted new territory.
While the movie was popular and certainly made its mark at the time of release, it hasn't
exactly aged well.
A hack therapist
When we first meet Sebastian, he's finishing up a session with his therapist, and it's
pretty clear that she's not good at her job.
She's constantly checking the clock, tuning him out, and even shilling her book to him.
She shares details about her own life and gets a little too personal for the typical
patient-psychiatrist relationship.
None of this is news to Sebastian, of course, but the fact that she so eagerly pierces the
veil of professionalism means she must not have paid much attention to the ethics portion
of her training.
Anyone who's been to a therapy session or even just seen one on TV knows this is not
how a shrink is supposed to behave.
"Schmuck."
A botched manifesto
When Sebastian sets his sights on Annette Hargrove as his next target of seduction,
it's because she's written an op-ed in an issue of Seventeen magazine about why she
plans to wait to abstain until marriage, and he sees her as a real challenge.
Interestingly, the cover shown is from the real February 1997 issue featuring Jennifer
Love Hewitt, and that choice may be an intentional Easter egg, since that was the same year Ryan
Phillippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar starred with Hewitt in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
If you press pause on the film when they show Annette's article, there are only a few lines
that are actual writing, and the bulk of the piece is nonsensical typesmash.
So, all of those lines that Sebastian so disdainfully reads off from Annette's piece are completely
fabricated and don't even appear on the page.
An onslaught of slurs
One aspect of Cruel Intentions that is particularly unsettling in the modern lens is its constant
and casual use of LGBTQ slurs.
The way characters refer to homosexuality is cringeworthy upon review.
For example, Kathryn mockingly questions Sebastian's love life just because he keeps a journal.
Then, when Sebastian meets Annette and discusses her manifesto, he says,
"Are you a lesbian?”
“No.”
“I didn't mean to offend you, I just picked up on a little bit of that lesbian vibe."
Later in the film, Sebastian shames a boy who he catches in bed with another boy.
The whole movie is littered with moments that are incredibly insensitive to the gay and
lesbian community, with little purpose to the lines, other than to offend.
A casual racist
Cruel Intentions can also rightly be criticized for its lack of cast diversity, as both the
central cast and most of the supporting players are white.
The one exception is the character Ronald, who's made to suffer the ignorance of Mrs.
Caldwell.
After she discovers that Ronald and Cecile have a budding romantic relationship, she
confronts him and claims that she got him "off the streets."
Once he corrects her about his status, she snipes back with,
"Oh don't give me any of that racist crap!
My husband and I gave money to Colin Powell!”
The exchange actually serves to explain Mrs. Caldwell's biases in a way that is relevant
to the plot, but even so, hearing her all-too-realistic racist remarks is still incredibly uncomfortable.
An outright assault
Perhaps the most harmful point in Cruel Intentions comes when Kathryn and Sebastian scheme to
damage Cecile's reputation at her new school.
They decide that in order to encourage her relationship with Ronald, Sebastian should
seduce her and introduce her.
As awful as the plot is, the execution is even more deplorable.
Sebastian invites Cecile over under the guise of helping her draft a love letter to Ronald
and proceeds to give her an alcoholic drink without her knowing.
"This sure doesn't taste like an iced tea.”
“It's from Long Island."
After that, he threatens to expose her for sneaking out to her mother and then forces
himself on her.
The next day, when she confides in Kathryn that she feels taken advantage of, Cecile
is told she should be happy about what happened and seek out more encounters with Sebastian.
In other words, Cecile not only endures assault, but she is also then coerced into
returning to her attacker's arms.
A quickfire courtship
The progression of Annette and Sebastian's romantic relationship is dizzyingly fast,
to the point that it's hard to believe they are able to develop the deep, meaningful bond
that supposedly unfolds.
They go from barely friends to forever in no time at all, when there is barely any substance
to their connection.
Mature audiences might have a harder time believing that a young woman who stayed abstinent
throughout a year-long relationship and wrote a national magazine article about that decision
would change her mind so quickly, especially since it's confirmed in the film's dialogue
that everything takes place over the course of just a few days.