Cruel Intentions Review: Barely Bold, Mildly Entertaining
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Look, I’m sorry if you’re a big fan of the original 1999 movie Cruel Intentions, but I only saw it on TV much later, sometime in the mid-2000s… and aside from the salacious plot involving two incestuous step-siblings manipulating a sweet blonde girl played by Reese Witherspoon, I honestly don’t remember much about it. So, this review won’t make comparisons between the 2024 series and the movie, which BTW was based on the French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
Plot overview: After a hazing incident at an elite college places student fraternities/sororities under scrutiny, Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook), the President of ‘Delta Phi Phi,’ conspires with her step-sibling Lucien (Zac Burgess) to seduce Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith), the daughter of the U.S. Vice President, in a bid to maintain their power and influence on campus. A major sub-plot focuses on how Caroline orchestrates a sly coup to oust the Alpha-Gamma President with the help of her loyal sidekick CeCe Carroway (Sara Silva) and friend Blaise Powell (John Kim), paving the way for the dim-witted Scott Russell (Khobe Clarke) to take over.
Sarah Catherine Hook looks every bit the snooty, manipulative, and privileged Caroline, complete with “mommy issues” and a willingness to stoop to any level to get what she wants. But the character often feels robotic, kinda like M3GAN from the techno-horror movie, but with even less personality. Zac Burgess, on the other hand, doesn’t quite sell the role of the man-slut Lothario Lucien, who can’t seem to get it on without a camera. Sure, Zac Burgess is undeniably cute, but he feels more like the guy you’d cast as Troy Bolton in High School Musical—you know, the “sweet, cute, nice” type—rather than the suave hotshot who can seduce any woman he sets his sights on. And I suppose that’s one of the biggest casting misfires in “Cruel Intentions”. Savannah Lee Smith is gorgeous as Annie Grover, but her character is extremely one-dimensional and boring. So, the seduction and power-games in this series is just not strong.
It’s Sara Silva as CeCe Carroway, who is the most fun to watch in this eight-episode series, a high-functioning, anxious young woman, who is like a robotic minion to Caroline. However, despite CeCe always running around doing errands, she is a lot more human. She constantly works, ensures all sorority events are perfect, becomes TA to History Professor Chadwick (Sean Patrick Thomas), and juggles both roles with surprising ease. Khobe Clarke, who plays the “dumb” Scott Russell, is the next most amusing characters in “Cruel Intentions”. After suffering some brain damage in a hazing incident, he becomes the source of the show’s silliest conversations. For example: when an inspection committee auditing the fraternity says, “We just need to take a look at your records,” Scott earnestly replies, “Yeah, we just use Spotify.”
John Kim is pretty sharp as Scott’s manipulative best-friend and secret boyfriend represents the not so privileged members of the fraternity, having to try extra hard to keep his place in the elite clubs. Brooke Lena Johnson plays Beatrice Worth, an activist-style student who leads the anti-Greek movement on campus. She campaigns for the disbandment of the “classist” social clubs, accusing them of misusing college funds and perpetuating a system of discrimination and bullying. All the college clubs function like exclusive cults, with ridiculous activities, including crazy expensive costumed parties. And while ‘realism’ is the last thing on the creators’ mind, they really have enough comedy, or even satire infused in the script to keep you glued to the screen. Although, to be fair, I was engaged enough to watch all episodes in one go, but the pace wasn’t to my liking.
It’s all the side characters in the series that are a lot more interesting, and that’s not a good thing for a show that’s looking to be back for a season 2. Unless the other characters get more screen space if a next installment happens. And for a show heavily centered around sex as a key theme, “Cruel Intentions” is barely sexy, steamy, or racy. There’s little sexual tension between step-siblings Caroline and Lucien, and I can’t even say anything about the onscreen chemistry between other characters, because they simply do not have enough scenes together.
Overall, “Cruel Intentions” is a very good-looking series, courtesy a gorgeous cast, lavish sets, some beautiful sequences, however, it’s just not as bold, or saucy as one would want it to be. At least this is more entertaining than Prime Video’s “Maxton Hall”, another 2024 series which follows rich kids in an Elite school.
Rating: 5 on 10. Watch the series on Prime Video.
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