Cruel Intentions: Critic Reviews

Foxy, snotty, enjoyably trashy!

What's both depressing and impressive about Cruel Intentions is the profound misanthropy of its meaning.

Though writer-director Roger Kumble doesn't fully exploit this conceit, Cruel Intentions is still briskly enjoyable, what people might call a 'guilty pleasure' -- only it's the sort of film that would mock anyone who felt guilt in pleasure.

You sometimes have to giggle at this movie the way you do when you catch 4-year-olds playing dress-up in front of Mom's closet.

The initial feel of Cruel Intentions is so audacious that the comedown is truly a letdown.

You may come to realize that if a bomb suddenly blew up everyone on screen, you wouldn't particularly miss anyone.

The film is pitched too high and too rich to make a solid connection with most young viewers.

As a serious study of vapid youth, Cruel Intentions vacillates between the cynically pretentious and the shallowly silly.

This is the filmic answer to a pack of Spice Girl cards.

Rarely has a film elicited more raucous unintended laughter.

Dangerous Liaisons among rich NYC teens.

You won't be able to resist the film's ribaldry and cynicism. Kids these days!

The film's cheat ending aside, this arch, ridiculous movie heaves, sweats and steams, and for the most part, it delivers what its title promises.

Every bit of the original's nastiness is retained but none of its wit or elegance.

Lascivious blackmailers and inveterate immoralists, these characters behave despicably, but the movie affects a tone of urbane detachment which puts sex in its proper perspective.

In the end, the whole shebang comes off like a bunch of snotty, rich white kids screwing each other and screwing each other over.

First-time helmer/writer Roger Kumble starts off on the right foot, but stumbles along the way.

[This] 'guilty pleasure' ends guilty of not living up to its potential.

The movie's cinematography, set design, and costume design are all extremely elegant, and the beautiful young actors are shown off to maximum effect, like expensively bred horses.

Egads.

Cruel Intentions is vapid and mean -- in a good way.

Kumble doesn't dumb down the themes of the novel too much, he just gives them a refreshing, flashy feel Dawson's Creek-style.

Despite its highly descriptive dialogue, Cruel Intentions features no nudity ... I doubt teenage boys will be satisfied just to hear Buffy talk dirty.

The movie never gets past a crucial structural flaw: Behavior that would have scandalized pre-Revolutionary France would scarcely raise an eyebrow among today's drug-dazed and sex-crazed Upper East Side crowd.

It is maliciously entertaining, up to a point.