Cruel Intentions

Who casted this? What were they on?!

Lucien looks like a twelve year old muppet that was found at a thrift store. There's no way any 20 year old is finding him attractive, or irresistible. He's actually intolerable.

The girl that plays the VP's daughter is not very convincing.

Terrible acting. Terrible writing. Terrible casting.

I don't think they should've named this, "Cruel Intentions," or used the movie's character names. Maybe then it'd appeal to the younger audience, not comparing it to the movie. None of these actors can hold a candle to Sarah Michelle Geller, Ryan Phillipe, Reese Witherspoon, or Selma Blair.

Seriously. What are they doing? What were they thinking? The worst is the guy playing Lucien. Why would the girls think he's attractive? He looks 14 and is neither suave or debonair. In the scene where he got the attention of the VPs daughter, he looks like a child trying to look like Ferris Bueller. There are some redeeming characters, but not enough to keep you watching. I miss the days when a movie or series did not intentionally try to cover all their bases by including every social demographic and sexual preference. Or at least do it in a way that doesn't come off as forced. Maybe they should have visited a few colleges to get some perspective. If they did, and that's what they found... we need help.

Other than Sara Silva who played CeCe, all of the actors were terribly cast. To say the acting was subpar is an understatement. Not to say they aren't decent actors... But the main characters definitely weren't suited for these roles. The storyline was decent, and while it is understood these aren't the same characters as the original movie, they are loosely based on them. It's not a completely different story.... They mimicked certain scenes from the original, like Caroline kissing Annie. Lucian was meant to be a sexy character like Sebastian was, but how it was thought Zak Burgess was the right look and actor for this role is lost on me. Sara Catherine Hook, who played Caroline, did a decent job of playing a bitch, but like Zak and the Lucien character, they didn't really pull off "sexy and seductive". It would have helped to not use the Cruel Intentions title, for the show, but regardless, these actors and actresses just missed the mark.

Three stars for the first four episodes, but it got better after that.

Still not good enough to even come close to rivalling the 1999 Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Philippe, "Bitter Sweet Symphony" movie. (Written as a kid in Year Nine in 1999, and enamoured with a few scenes in that movie in particular!)

Sarah Catherine Hook is the best thing about the show. She is perfectly cruel, devious and manipulative as Caroline Merteuil, one half of the step-brother/sister focus of the series.

If you stick out the first four episodes, it does get better. But by then it's too late for the series as a whole.

Sometimes Amazon should just leave it alone. This and "Roadhouse" are two examples of modern treatments that should have stayed on the cutting room floor, so to speak.

Cruel Intentions (Apple)-Adapted from the 18th-century novel "Dangerous Liaisons" in which a ladykiller and his ex-lover make a wager over whether he can seduce a recent widower, this was first adapted into the 1988 Oscar Best Picture nominee "Dangerous Liaisons", and then adapated into the 1999 film "Cruel Intentions." The 1999 film was updated to modern times and starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe as morally depraved stepsiblings. It came out during a wave of popular teenage films such as "10 Things I Hate About You", "She's All That", and "American Pie" but presented a significantly edgier version of adolescent amorality.

Slight tangent: I'm opposed to the use of the term "incels." Sexual opportunities are distributed unequally, and I've never seen "incels" talked about with any level of empathy. It's as if the discussion around this demographic suggests a causality that losing the sexual lottery in life, also has the added label that you're infected with a particularly brand of misogyny. The reality is likely closer to jerks are jerks in whatever form they take (including those using the "incel" term as a blanket label).

That being said, the Sebastian/Lucien character seems like an incel fantasy: He gets way more sex than he deserves and gets away scot-free with being not just misogynistic but psychopathic during the act.

In one of the opening scenes of the film, Sebastian comes onto his therapist and then serves a delicious bit of revenge for overcharging him by seducing his daughter. I remember watching this as a teen and being turned off enough that I changed the channel (I came around to it later). The guy seemed disgusting and I lost rooting interest in him as well as the story.

In our introduction to Lucien (Zac Burgess) in the show, he's seen having a quickie with a sorority pledge in the bathroom (Brooke Lena Johnson, one of the most interesting parts of the story), and he's being condescending to her during the act. In the fourth episode, he sets his sights on sleeping with a noted sex guru. She's an obvious choice for a sex trophy for any ambitious college age guy, but the question remains as to why the hyperaware sex guru would even entertain the notion of being used by a college kid as a bed post notch. Immediately after the completion of the act, Lucien confesses non-chalantly that he wasn't familiar with her work; he just wanted to bag someone of her pedigree. But she still has his phone. Why not just throw it out the window? Why not just delete their sex tape? How does this guy not get punched in the face? He's leaving an extremely sloppy paper trail of spurned ex-lovers in a small community.

This can wear the viewer out. As I often refer to as my "House of Cards" rule, I can stomach a repulsive character in a film because it's only a couple hours and I can chalk it off as a poetic sense of tragedy if the bad guy wins. Watching a villain (or even an anti-hero) escape the throes of karma week after week can get exhausting.

Whereas Ryan Phillipe's Sebastian emanated a mysterious charm, the charm of his TV counterpart is an informed ability: It doesn't seem like there's anything that Lucien is doing to earn his status as untouchable, but somehow it exists.

Because this show is about privilege and the problematic continued existence of Greek life on college campuses, it does kind of work as a meditation on how those in Greek life can be untouchable (many deadly hazing incidents in the headlines have confirmed this tragic reality). If the series engineered more of a morally equivalent universe for its two key villains, there's a better chance that this shift in focus to those dastardly frats could have been a more poignant use of the source material.

Instead, it's a slightly edgier version of your coming-of-age teen melodrama with a couple more a-holes in the mix. Outside of the two main characters, some of the characters really have potential like the casually sinister money embezzleer Blaise (John Kim...how freaking old is he?), the uptight right hand woman Cece (Sara Silva gives her considerably more agency than Selma Blair did in 1999), and feminist rebel Beatrice (Brooke Lena Johnson) who seems to be refreshingly aware of her twin desires of jealousy and social belonging.