Cruel Intentions
dir. Roger Kumble
Columbia Pictures

Every teenaged generation has had its own group of “teen movies,” starting with 1958’s The Blob (which starred a decidedly non-teenage Steve McQueen). Gidget, Frankie and Annette beach-blanket-bingoed through the ‘60s. Teens of the '70s wandered aimlessly through Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show and George Lucas’ American Graffiti. John Hughes thoughtfully examined ’80s social differences through Molly Ringwald and The Geek.

But knockoffs of Hughes’ work took on the silliest and most immature aspects of his films, offsetting quirky gems like Some Kind of Wonderful and Sixteen Candles with frat-boy fantasies like Porky’s and Zapped. Much like Blazing Saddles killed off the Western through self-parody, Revenge of the Nerds and its ilk did the same for the teen movie.

Which brings us to the 1990s. The few teen movies from the early part of the decade, including Amy Heckerling’s Clueless and Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, were sparkling comedies with real feeling behind them. Their late ’90s counterparts, however, were an onslaught of brilliant marketing.

Perhaps Hollywood’s marketing force discovered, much as it had in the late 1950s, that teenagers were not just a captive audience but also a cash cow waiting to be exploited. Teens were more than willing to part with their allowance in order to see cute young things make googly eyes at each other, particularly if it involved a hip new take on a classic tale.

Although it really started with the football epic Varsity Blues and She's All That, a George Bernard Shaw for Dummies production of “Pygmalion,” the pinnacle of this trend was reached with 1999’s Cruel Intentions. An update of “Les Liasions Dangereuse,” it moved the 1782 novel to modern Manhattan and starred three pouty starlets (Selma Blair, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe) and Reese Witherspoon.

Writer/director Roger Kumble’s decision to make the story modern and move the focus to rich, snotty high-schoolers seemed like a good idea. Who is more Machiavellian these days — the head cheerleader or the socialite? Teenagers — particularly the bored, rich ones — do have a tendency to get themselves in trouble, and Kumble correctly guessed that such a thing would be fun to watch.

Although Cruel Intentions is an awful movie, filled with cheesy acting and some of the worst dialogue this side of Titanic, it’s a ’90s camp classic, a good bad movie that gets funnier with every viewing. But unintentional hilarity is not Cruel Intentions’ lasting contribution to the teen movie or to 1990s filmmaking — rather, it is an example of how Hollywood can produce drivel and make a quick buck at the same time.

Eventually grossing upwards of $38 million in domestic theatrical release, Cruel Intentions opened in the no. 2 spot in the box office, quickly recouping its $11 million cost by earning $13 million its first week. With this success in mind, studios scurried to produce such fare, figuring an easy formula for box office gold.

But while Cruel Intentions, She’s All That, American Pie and its cohorts from the spring and summer of 1999 at least had a few redeeming qualities or provided over-the-top laughs, its 2000 counterparts lacked any redeeming value.

Studios took barely-there initiative, added the predictability of teenage consumers and produced box office gold with terrible movies. The atrocious Boys and Girls and Down to You both took in $20 million and cost much less to make; the so-so Bring it On and Road Trip were two of 2000’s biggest box-office success stories.

While not all of the late 1990s teen movies were terrible or even campy (10 Things I Hate About You was actually pretty good and I have my very own copy of Drive Me Crazy), most of them were obviously produced to make a lot of money in very little time, hence the lack of good acting and interesting storylines.

Maybe all it will take to stop this nonsense is a cruel spoof of what teen movies have become, or perhaps someone will actually make a film about teenagers that is based on real life and even has some redeemable value. There is, after all, a new generation of teenagers to reach out to in the next decade.

Then again, Britney Spears and *NSYNC are in talks for Grease 3.

Lord help us all.

— Stephanie Kuenn (smkuenn at gmail dot com)