Cruel Intentions

Roger Kumble who made Cruel Intentions claims to have never read the original novel. This version would lend credence to that!

Ryan Phillipe (54) plays Sebastian who in Cruel Intentions is a rich, Manhattan Prep School student. He takes a bet with his step sister Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) that he can seduce and bed the virginal Annette (Resse Witherspoon) who is the daughter of the new school principal.

If he loses he has to give his step sister his swish car. If he wins he gets to screw his step sister.

This film doesn't work. The Stephen Frears film featured dangerous morally unstable French aristocrats; creatures who would always be more malicious and insecure than a couple of spoilt high school kids.

It takes more years than these children have gathered to become conniving enough to be convincing bastards.

There were deliciously desperate, ornate social conventions to be adhered to or broken in Dangerous Liaisons.

One had the sense in the earlier film that the depravity of the main characters was a symptom of a wider breakdown in society.

And the innocents were truly innocents in Dangerous Liaisons and it was awful to see what happened to them.

In Cruel Intentions on the other hand the main innocent victim becomes an idiot, represented by Cecile (Selma Blair).

And so Phillipe and Gellar sneer a lot and it's just annoying. But Kathryn wears very trendy rich girls clothes.