Cruel Intentions

Description

Product Description

Sarah Michelle Gellar (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, TV’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and Ryan Phillippe (I Know What You Did Last Summer, 54) sizzle as a pair of unscrupulous siblings in a deliciously sexy tale of seduction, revenge and conquest. After cleverly seducing and ruining the reputation of an unsuspecting classmate (Selma Blair, Can’t Hardly Wait, Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane), the sparks fly when Kathryn (Gellar) poses the ultimate challenge to her insatiable stepbrother Sebastian (Phillippe): deflower the Headmaster’s beautiful, virgin daughter Annette (Reese Witherspoon, Pleasantville, The Man In The Moon). If he fails, Kathryn gets his most prized possession, but if he succeeds, Sebastian gets to possess and bed Kathryn. The stakes are high, but for Sebastian, the payoff is feverishly irresistible and before the summer’s over, no one will escape their relentless game of cat and mouse until one of them is bitten by the most unlikely sensation of all …love.

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This modern-day teen update of Les Liaisons Dangereuses suffered at the hands of both critics and moviegoers thanks to its sumptuous ad campaign, which hyped the film as an arch, highly sexual, faux-serious drama (not unlike the successful, Oscar-nominated Dangerous Liaisons). In fact, this intermittently successful sudser plays like high comedy for its first two-thirds, as its two evil heroes, rich stepsiblings Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe), blithely ruin lives and reputations with hearts as black as coal. Kathryn wants revenge on a boyfriend who dumped her, so she befriends his new intended, the gawky Cecile (Selma Blair), and gets Sebastian to deflower the innocent virgin. The meat of the game, though, lies in Sebastian’s seduction of good girl Annette (a down-to-earth Reese Witherspoon), who’s written a nationally published essay entitled “Why I Choose to Wait.” If he fails, Kathryn gets his precious vintage convertible; if he wins, he gets Kathryn–in the sack. When the movie sticks to the merry ruination of Kathryn and Sebastian’s pawns, it’s highly enjoyable: Gellar in particular is a two-faced manipulator extraordinaire, and Phillippe, usually a black hole, manages some fun as a hipster Eurotrash stud. Most pleasantly surprising of all is Witherspoon, who puts a remarkably self-assured spin on a character usually considered vulnerable and tortured (see Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons). Unfortunately, writer-director Roger Kumble undermines everything he’s built up with a false ending that’s true to neither the reconceived characters nor the original story–revenge is a dish best served cold, not cooked up with unnecessary plot twists. –Mark Englehart