Lesson from Cruel Intentions (1999)

Hey Brother,

I recently watched Cruel Intentions, a teen romance with some spicy parts. But since I watched it as an unbiased viewer, I can't say if I found Sarah Michelle Gellar attractive in it. It's not a very deep movie.

Basically, it's about rich high schoolers playing games with people's hearts.

The male lead, played by Ryan Phillippe, wants to sleep with women to ruin them, while the female lead, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, is more focused on ruining everyone's reputation, including her own, and, spoiler alert, the male lead's too.

Basically, almost everyone in this movie who talks a lot is a real psycho.

The summary might not grab your attention unless you're into movies like American Psycho for life lessons.

Despite the shock factor of Cruel Intentions, with its step-sibling romance in the first few minutes, there are some interesting aspects.

The male lead portrays the laid-back attitude of someone born into wealth very well. I've seen similar traits in real-life wealthy people, and it's not always positive. In the movie, he casually tells a girl she's beautiful, takes her hand, and has dinner with her.

It might seem strange to some, but it's what you can do when a woman is attracted to you. In this character's case, he has both amazing looks and wealth, so it's no surprise women are eager to be with him.

An old-school Pick-Up Artist (PUA) might watch this movie and think he just needs to pretend until he's successful, using "shock and awe" tactics. But they'd miss the point that this only works if the woman genuinely likes you.

The movie doesn't reflect on itself much, but there's a hidden aspect of the rich living well, known as "savoir-vivre".

If you're in the top 1%, you'll stay rich, but even among the well-off, you'll find people acting carefree when they should be budgeting. This might affect pampered daughters of the upper middle class more, but it's a problem for others too.

For example, I know someone from a wealthy family who didn't take life seriously at all. He began partying hard in his early teens and as he looked much older than he was, he ended up banging not just teenage chicks but also women in their early 20s and above when he was 15 or 16.

He surely had his fun for a solid decade, but his current position in life, based on what I gather, is not nearly as enviable as his teenage years may have been, now that his youthful looks are gone and his career is not really going anywhere.

For people like this life peaks early and unfolds on a long downward trajectory.

Another thing Cruel Intentions portrays well is female rivalries, almost like Mean Girls.

The female lead, for example, enjoys leading her supposed female friends astray. She encourages them to become sluts.

Not only does she push her supposed best friend to sleep as many dudes as she can, she also tries to get her involved with her black music teacher, just to cause trouble by taking pictures to show the girl's mother.

The movie gets extreme when the female lead sleeps with the teacher out of spite. This happens in real life, too, but usually, women do not cross racial lines when doing such things.

Unfortunately, the movie takes a nose-dive in quality towards the end as the story becomes more and more ridiculous.

I was okay with the main storyline, even though it was a bit hard to believe.

It's about the male lead plotting to bang the daughter of the new headmaster of his expensive private school.

She wrote an article on why she wants to stay a virgin. Predictably, he falls in love with her and they end up having sex.

So far so good. But then, the female lead gets so angry about their romance that she plots to have the male lead killed.

She convinces the black dude she's been seeing to do it by telling him that her brother hurt her.

This guy thinking he is defending the honor of this slut gets into a fight with the main lead in Central Park, in broad daylight.

Then the male lead gets hit by a car and dies. It's all pretty cringe-worthy but the first 60 minutes or so of this movie are pretty good.

Until next time

-MOS