Cult classic 1999 film Cruel Intentions had a lot of shortcomings (decent acting chief among them), but one thing it did understand was the power of melodrama. Loosely based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 epistolary novel concerning the French aristocracy, Les Liaisons Dangereuses , the film starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Philippe as rival, wealthy step-siblings prepared to do whatever it takes for school social status and the innate pleasure of outdoing one another, with Reese Witherspoon their naïve bait. It was a deeply camp and outrageously silly film about high school cruelty: Clueless meets The Craft .
Prime Video ‘s reboot completely misunderstands that hokey appeal. The action has been moved from the Manchester Prep school of the original film to Manchester College, an elite university just outside Washington, DC. Sarah Catherine Hook is Caroline, the outwardly good yet secretly amoral Gellar figure, who is president of the Delta Phi sorority and desperate to get the daughter of the vice-president, Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith) to join.
She recruits her rake of a step-brother Lucien (Zac Burgess, not even remotely charming enough for this role), to seduce Annie over to Delta Phi, and promises him the ultimate reward – a night in bed with herself – if he obliges. The tension is meant to hinge on bad boy Lucien accidentally falling for good girl Annie and messing up all the scheming. The high stakes of a simple cat-and-mouse game is gone, mak.
