starring Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon
directed by Roger Kumble
97 minutes
Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe) makes a bet with Katherine (Sarah Michelle Gellar), his step sister, that he can seduce Annette (Reese Witherspoon) into sleeping with him. Annette wrote an essay that was printed in Seventeen in which she explained why she was planning to stay chaste until she got married. All three of them are students at an elite prep school in New York City. Annette knows nothing of the bet,
Sebastian gets close to Annette but things get complicated when he finds himself falling for her. She gives him an opening which would win him the bet but he feels conflicted. He is with her one minute and not the next. He breaks her heart and then sends her his journal which explains everything about the bet, Katherine, and Cecile another girl he seduced.
Annette is ready to forgive Sebastian when he is hit by a car and killed. She was in the vehicle's path. He pushed her to safety but was unable to escape the speeding car.
This is the second time I have seen this movie. I saw it in the theater when it was first released. I wasn't crazy about it then. I'm not crazy about it now. Watching it felt like homework, which it was in a way. I only decided to watch it again because it was one of the films spotlighted on a recent episode of You Must Remember This. I watched the other film spotlighted on that episode, Wild Things (1998), about a month ago. I was a bit disappointed to learn once I listened to the podcast episode, after watching this movie, that very little time was spent discussing Cruel Intentions.
This movie is based on the same book that inspired Dangerous Liasons and Valmost. I think I might have seen one of those two films but I'm not sure which one. Director Roger Kumble also directed a prequel that came out in 2000 and a sequel that came out in 2016.
I wasn't terribly impressed with the performances in this movie. They didn't make me feel anything in particular. It felt like Phillippe and Gellar were reading their lines but not putting much else into developing their characters.
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