The plot uses sex in a way that seems regressive compared to the original.
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| Image Credit: Prime Video |
Coming to Prime Video on November 21, 2024, Cruel Intentions, an eight-episode TV series, drawing inspiration from the 1999 film of the same name by Roger Kumble, an adaptation of the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. The series by Phoebe Fisher and Sara Goodman takes the powerful premise, with its backstabbing and sexual vicissitudes, and gives the story a modern twist. With a mix of intrigue, seduction, and power struggles, Cruel Intentions promises to capture a new generation of fans. It prepares to revisit themes of manipulation, power, and seduction, just like the film that conquered audiences in the late 90s.
Following a hazing incident last semester that left Scott Russell (Khobe Clarke), the son of a congressman, hospitalized, the sororities and fraternities are in jeopardy. Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) wants to become president of Delta Phi, but when things get complicated, she wants to do whatever it takes to save the day. Desperate, she asks her stepbrother, Lucien, to seduce the naive Annie into joining Delta, thus ensuring their sorority will be in Manchester. Bored, Lucien (Zac Burgess) decides to accept Caroline's offer, which will get him something he's always wanted: sex with Caroline. If he fails to bring Annie into the fold, he'll lose his vintage Jaguar XK140.
Cruel Intentions: From the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Washington, DC
Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) is the head of the Delta Phi sorority, which has only one goal: to psychologically torture other students. Meanwhile, Lucien (Zac Burgess) is the treasurer of the Alpha Gamma sorority, where sex, drugs, and embezzlement are the order of the day. Unlike the source material, 97 perfect minutes of emotionally charged eroticism and 90s anthems, this Cruel Intentions doesn’t quite know where to go. Because Annie isn’t just the target of Lucien’s affections, she’s also the daughter of the Vice President of the United States, and so, it’s more than a game of cat and mouse with her stepsister, but instead with the Secret Service agents who are tracking Annie’s every move.
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| Image Credit: Prime Video |
Where the original was set in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the characters were teenagers on summer vacation before returning to their elite boarding school in the fall, here the setting is Manchester College, an elite school in Washington, D.C., where the students are representatives of their parents’ ideas, needs, and choices, including the campus fraternities, a key element. Instead of two manipulative stepbrothers betting that they can seduce a virgin classmate as part of a larger plan that is supposed to benefit their sister socially, the plot is now still about two manipulative stepbrothers betting that one of them can seduce the daughter of the vice president of the United States as part of a larger plan to save their sister’s fraternity.
In this new setting, references are made to the film – some actors appeared in the film who also appear here, such as Sean Patrick Thomas who plays a college professor -: the use of the same font, a vintage black Jaguar, a cross necklace full of cocaine, a suggestion of someone with an eating disorder and a hidden homosexual plot, just to name a few. Even the names of the characters are clear references to the original: the sister is Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) instead of Kathryn, the brother is Lucien (Zac Burgess) instead of Sebastian, the new girl he is trying to seduce is Annie (Savannah Lee Smith) instead of Annette, and the sister's best friend is Cece (Sara Silva) instead of Cecile.
Moving Cruel Intentions from a school setting to a university means adding the whole world of fraternities, those "clandestine societies" with all the risky initiation rituals that are part of them. The Greek system is meant to stand in for the Upper East Side of New York or pre-Revolution France. For what purpose? It’s unclear.
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| Image Credit: Prime Video |
Cruel Intentions: Lacks a Solid Context for Satire
The plot uses sex in a way that feels regressive compared to the original. It’s “exclusionary, classist, binary, heteronormative,” says a student involved in the anti-fraternity protest in one episode. Every episode relies on poorly written jokes, and the show fails to use satire as well as the 1999 film or the Greek system like Scream Queens.
Watching Cruel Intentions makes you feel out of touch also because focusing on post-Me Too sexual manipulation is very strange or rather it can be done very well but in another way and with a much more solid basis. The issue is not so much the fact of making irony on certain themes, but the feeling is that they are more than anything jokes, problematic ironies that are not based on anything. The episodes fail to win over the audience, they are poorly constructed, and the characters do not hook the audience also because they are reduced to stereotypes, one-dimensional.
Cruel Intentions: evaluation and conclusion
While the film is a cult classic, the serial version fails to achieve its purpose; the mischievous stepbrothers and their sexual manipulations seem simply useless. The series is just another example of unnecessary adaptation. It lacks originality and that sinister sensuality that had made the characters of the film so fascinating. It offers nothing new. A plot centered on the dangers of sororities feels stale and outdated, and while they are certainly villains, neither Lucien nor Caroline have the menacing qualities that Gellar and Phillippe mastered in the original. Lucien is not believable as a womanizer, and Caroline’s unresolved issues with her mother make her more sadistic than seductive.
Reboots are challenging because they have to provide something modern and intriguing to appeal to longtime fans and newcomers alike. There is absolutely no idea behind it, no current dialogue, no fresh interpretation, nothing that gives a twist to the story, even the references and slang in the scripts sound filtered, worked on, and written, not the products of a society, of a group.
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