The early reviews of Amazon’s Cruel Intentions read as though they could be lifted directly from the callous pages of Sebastian Valmont’s infamous journal, leaving the somewhat inaccurate impression that the streaming series fails as an adaptation.
However, this modern facelift of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses earnestly strives to deliver its promise to offer a fresh spin on the cult classic, though it manages to fall short nevertheless. Despite its valiant efforts, Cruel Intentions joins the original film’s two subsequent installments in proving that the lighting-in-a-bottle magic of the 1999 teen drama is likely impossible to replicate and that, like Sebastian Valmont himself, some things should remain buried in the past.
In 1999’s Cruel Intentions, Sarah Michelle Gellar cemented her indelible chokehold on the decade by delivering a deviant and instantly iconic performance as the wicked Kathryn Merteuil. Flanked by fellow ’90s heartthrob Ryan Phillippe and the up-and-coming Reese Witherspoon, the film explores the equal parts trivial and taboo sexual bargain between Gellar and Phillippe’s egregiously wealthy step-siblings.
The Prime Video adaptation invites Sarah Catherine Hook and Zac Burgess to step into the contemporary versions of these central roles, and they carry the torches of these characters admirably. But, from the genuinely captivating Hook to an Amy Adams performance in Cruel Intentions 2 that left much more to be desired, it’s evident that Gellar’s rendition was just too monolithic to overcome. The existence of such an immovably definitive version of Cruel Intentions‘ leading villain serves as just one example of how the series – alongside an endless sea of similar attempts to revive cult properties – fails to escape the confines of its predecessor to find its voice.
While the character’s names have been tweaked and the action set against the backdrop of collegiate Greek life, Cruel Intentions maintains the core premise and beats of the turn-of-the-century classic. Power-hungry sorority president Caroline Merteuil coaxes step-brother Lucien Belmont into seducing Second Daughter of the United States and incoming college freshman Annie Grover. If he’s able to convince Savannah Lee Smith’s Annie to pledge to his step-sister’s Delta Phi sisterhood rather than the Greek house to which she’s a legacy, Caroline promises Lucien an epilogue to their long-standing game of sexual cat-and-mouse. Though the tidbit where Caroline secures the campus Lothario’s car if he fails his mission is added as an afterthought, the underlying motivations between the duo’s bet harbor much more substantial consequences than the film version of Cruel Intentions.
The central bet of the original Cruel Intentions is flippant by design, emphasizing the unnerving ease with which the uber-wealthy can dehumanize people and reduce them to playthings. While Caroline’s politically goal-oriented variation of the bet thus detracts slightly from the message originally touted by the film, it’s a necessary amendment to sustain the story over eight episodes. The siblings’ diverging stakes in Annie Grover thus fuel the Prime series’ retelling, with Monster of the Week-style manipulations paving the road to the doomed conclusion of their bet.
After establishing its modified stakes, Cruel Intentions sets off to fill its Washington D.C. college campus with political stakes that simulate those of the character’s mover and shaker parents. The series emphasizes its political angle by embracing the Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk format (complete with a scene where two characters point out that they weren’t walking anywhere in particular), though it never quite achieves the witty edge of a stroll down The West Wing‘s corridors or the teen drama charm of a Gilmore Girls-style walk-and-talk.
Cruel Intentions legacy Sean Patrick Thomas stars in the adaptation as Hank Chadwick, a professor teaching a course on fascist regimes. The series utilizes his syllabus to rather bluntly contrast Greek life, its own microcosm of DC politics, to fascism. However, the junior politicking of the Cruel Intentions ensemble ultimately serves as a string of plot devices that never quite give the audience enough to sink their teeth into. That being said, the deeper well the show seems to have stumbled into relates instead to gender politics.
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An establishing scene in which Caroline makes her play for Annie Grover comes in the form of a Delta Phi meeting on potential pledges. In line with the ironic churchlike aesthetics of the sorority, the girls are seated in neat rows in their Sunday best, voting on pledges with auctioneer’s paddles. Later on, Lucien’s fraternity throws a similar meeting that’s unkempt, boisterous, and riddled with homophobic remarks. Both scenes exemplify different forms of cruelty and toxicity across an extremely rigidly gendered line. This established, albeit surprisingly old-fashioned and hardline, gender dynamic then informs the series-long tension between the openly gay Blaise Powell, the closeted Scott Russell, and the remainder of their fraternity brothers. However, much like the comparisons the series wants audiences to draw between the Greeks and history’s greatest fascists, the pieces of this larger cultural conversation exist in a way the show’s never quite able to poignantly capitalize on.
Despite the elements of Cruel Intentions that fall flat, the series is not without its redeeming qualities. The adaptation is buoyed by strong performances and particularly endearing characters in Sara Silva’s Cece Carroway and the aforementioned himbo Scott Russell, modeled off Selma Blair and Eric Mabius’ respective characters in the original film. Brooke Lena Johnson’s Beatrice Worth and her New Political Society likewise add a layer to the overall scheming, as she intends to take down Greek society through campus action. Beatrice’s motivations are no more pure than those she’s positioned herself against, which is perhaps the closest the show comes to saying something about its miniature political ecosystem.
Though far from perfect, Cruel Intentions would undoubtedly make entertaining viewing for fans of the classic catty breed of teen drama if it weren’t tasked with living in the shadow of its predecessor. Therein lies the perpetual gamble of adaptation, particularly for cult films.
Streamers are always going to take a stab at it because occasionally they stumble into a Fargo, Westworld, or What We Do in the Shadows, but there’s a difference between adapting a film for television because there’s something fresh to say versus banking on its name recognition and nostalgia. Teen classics seem to require an even defter touch, they run the gamut from the handful of well-received series like Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies and Ten Things I Hate About You to the passable I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream to the universally panned attempts like 2018’s Heathers.
Very rarely has lasting television gold been struck in the process of adapting a cult teen film to the medium, with perhaps the exception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Maybe the takeaway from this whole process is Sarah Michelle Gellar or bust.
Cruel Intentions is streaming now on Prime Video.
Published: Nov 25, 2024 07:30 am