Plot: Follows the elite students of Manchester College, a Washington, D.C.-adjacent university, where reputation means everything, fraternities and sororities are the gold standard, and two ruthless step-siblings, Caroline Merteuil and Lucien Belmont, will do anything to stay on top of the cutthroat social hierarchy. After a brutal hazing incident threatens the entire Greek Life system, they’ll do whatever is necessary to preserve their power and reputation – even if that means seducing Annie Grover, the daughter of the Vice President of the United States. Hearts will be broken, loyalties will be tested, and secrets will be revealed in this modern-day royal court that is Manchester College.
Review: Since the 1988 film version of Dangerous Liaisons starring Glenn Close, Michelle Pfieffer, John Malkovich, and Uma Thurman, there have been ten adaptations of the eighteenth-century bestseller by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos including a 2022 series that aired on Starz. The most popular take on the novel was 1999’s Cruel Intentions, which starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, and Selma Blair. Notable for being the film that began the real-life relationship between Witherspoon and Phillippe, Cruel Intentions spawned a lackluster prequel and sequel film and a stage musical in 2015. A television series starring Gellar failed to get past a pilot in 2016. Still, now the contemporary teen-centric romantic update of the classic novel is back for a new generation with Prime Video’s Cruel Intentions. Featuring a cast of relative unknowns in the leads, this version of Cruel Intentions aims to capture the melodrama and eroticism of the films in a long-form series. The question is: were they able to capture the same sexual chemistry as the 1999 film?
The eight-episode first season boasts some changes from the film, notably the shift in setting from New York City to Washington, DC. The school remains the primary location for the new series, with private high school Manchester Prep turning into Manchester College. The aging up of the teenage characters from Roger Kumble’s film does remove some of the creepier underage elements, but with the cast all in their mid-to-late twenties, they all seem too old for their roles. The novelty of rich kids acting naughty is not exactly a new concept, with Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars mining this material for the last decade. Cruel Intentions pushed the envelope of the PG-13 rating back at the close of the twentieth century, and the reboot has no qualms about profanity or sexual content, with the premiere episode boasting everything you can show on screen short of nudity.
In both Dangerous Liaisons and Cruel Intentions films, the main thrust of the plot centers on a wager between step-siblings to see if the brother can seduce a new student at their school. With manipulation and trickery, the brother develops feelings for his conquest, to the chagrin of his step-sister. In the new series, there is still a psycho-sexual battle waged between the siblings, now named Caroline Merteuil (Sarah Catherine Hook playing the equivalent role played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess in Ryan Phillippe’s role). Their conquest changes from Reese Witherspoon’s virgin headmaster’s daughter to Annie Grover (Sara Silva), the daughter of the Vice President. Some supporting roles are similar, with Lucien still having a gay friend, now called Blaise Powell (John Harlan Kim playing Joshua Jackson’s role), who seduces a dimwitted student, Scott Russell (Khobe Clarke). Selma Blair’s naive Cecile is now CeCe (Sara Silva), and rather than being Caroline’s enemy, she is her second-in-command at their sorority. Through the first season, the relationship between Caroline and Lucien shifts from an alliance to a rivalry and back again.
The eight-episode first season does not follow the original film outside of key plot points, with this adaptation being a wholly original look at the spoiled and wealthy behaving badly. While series like Succession offer solid writing and biting commentary, Cruel Intentions is just sex and revenge thrown together and repeated. There are callbacks to moments from the original film, along with the inclusion of Sean Patrick Thomas in the cast, albeit in a very different role than he played in 1999. Most of the series is focused on the youthful ensemble, with some, notably John Harlan Kim, Sara Silva, and Brooke Lena Johnson, standing out as more interesting than the rest. Zac Burgess is the least interesting character in this series and has virtually no charisma compared to those who have played the role before. The adult cast boasts some nice supporting roles for Claire Forlani, Jon Tenney, and Nikki Crawford, but
The first season of Cruel Intentions, with episodes directed by Adam Arkin, Nick Copus, and Iain B. MacDonald, was created by Phoebe Fisher and Sara Goodman, with the duo writing three of the eight episodes. Roger Kumble, writer/director of the 1999 film, serves as executive producer, which may account for the similarity in the title font and the repeated use of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony,” which was the theme song for the original film. Phoebe Fisher’s experience writing for Prime Video’s short-lived I Know What You Did Last Summer and Sara Goodman’s tenure writing for The Hardy Boys series show in the CW-caliber writing of this series. The characters are all atrocious and bad people, making it hard for the audience to root for anyone to win against the other nasty characters. The affluence on display is gross, but none of this series qualifies as satire or commentary and instead is just wealth porn.
The original Cruel Intentions was not entirely well-received by critics and has become a cult classic over the last twenty-five years. The film still remains a showcase for three actors with great potential. The new Cruel Intentions will share a similar critical consensus as it is nowhere near as good as the source material that inspired it. This series can only distinguish itself from its predecessor in the fact that the leads in this version do not boast anything close to the talent that the 1999 cast had. I am sure there will be an audience who enjoys watching overly thin actors get naked with each other and treat one another like sex toys, but there is a way to make a series erotic and entertaining rather than just nasty. This new series’s creators had the best intentions with their reimagining, but the results are just plain cruel.
Cruel Intentions premieres all eight episodes on November 21st on Prime Video.
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