CRUEL INTENTIONS. How Ugly and Pointless the Elite Can Be [REVIEW]

In 1999, Roger Kumble directed a modern adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons—the first and best Cruel Intentions. Two more films in the series followed, but they are hardly worth mentioning. Then, in 2024, Prime Video took a chance on the title, which had the potential to become a hit, and turned it into a series. However, a lot of time has passed since 1999, as evident in the production’s storyline and style. That’s natural, but in this case, time has left an additional mark—a mark of culture, or perhaps more accurately, a peculiar, elitist, corrupted subculture that bears no resemblance to the realities of life or the value systems that still guide a significant portion of the student body in our part of the world. Honestly, it would have been better to make a series about a punk subculture desperately trying to join the social elite. At least it would have been funny.

Instead, what we get is lukewarm, artificial, with performances that feel like they’ve stepped out of a glossy magazine drenched in Photoshop. It fails to evoke any real emotion and, though supposedly grounded in reality, comes off as pointlessly melodramatic. The plot of the latest Cruel Intentions is a loose reimagining of the 1999 movie. Once again, it revolves around gaining influence in the student world. In the original, the goal was to seduce the headmaster’s daughter as an act of revenge against her ex-boyfriend. Here, the aim is to gain influence—practically political influence—within the student community, not through seduction but by manipulating the daughter of the President of the United States on multiple levels. The creators of the series have truly gone off the rails, presenting a world of fraternities at an elite university led by “presidents” waging wars over influence as if they were political parties. At this point, one might ask, “What about education?” But you’d come off as old-fashioned, because studying, at least in this series, isn’t about gaining knowledge but about feathering a nest in the elite world.

It makes a certain sense, especially now, when Trump seems poised to rule America again alongside a peculiar retinue of businessmen and congressmen mired in sexual scandals. If the series was somehow meant to satirize the modern democratic mainstream, it succeeds in being ultra-realistic. Beyond that, however, it’s a shocking indictment of democracy and human culture if such morally and ideologically constructed students are the ones shaping the elites that govern us. One could describe them as a complete degradation of human culture, and if only this group has a chance to succeed, democracy as a system is essentially finished.

Yet, there’s not enough biting critique in the series to consider it truly meaningful. Its lack of reflection is almost crude and, at the very least, emotionally flat. The story’s pretentiousness makes it hard to believe in any realism within the events depicted. The characters fight over and obsess about such trivial matters that their concerns seem less significant than choosing between sausage brands at Lidl—a decision that, ironically, could have a far more long-term and positive impact on a person’s life than picking members of some student fraternity based on their parents’ income. It’s hard to find any sense in it, and such a vision of American culture is unlikely to resonate with viewers from the Old Continent, whose ideals America has already heavily distorted. After years of admiration, the transatlantic paradise is slowly becoming a country we’d rather steer clear of. At least we have proof that after regaining political freedom, we still ideologically cling to the cradle of world culture, one we can actively help shape—though our elites occasionally seem just as corrupt.

Cruel Intentions, however, is far from pointing anyone toward a better path. It’s a straightforward series built around the prolonged conflict of two antagonists, designed to irritate viewers with their behavior and gradually show how the oppressed can take revenge and reclaim power. The problem is that replacing elites always comes with its revolutionary price. Mature elitism hardly exists because, as a concept and practice, it is always separated from lower social strata. Wealth prevents understanding the problems of the less fortunate—a capability only a select few possess, those who earned their millions rather than inheriting their first from their parents.

This cannot be said of the series’ characters. They are spoiled young people, written in a clichéd and one-dimensional manner, even for antagonists. This affects the show’s reception—it is not only distant in terms of values from our world but also bland in character development, acting, music, and overly polished visuals, almost museum-like. It reminds me of Ford’s Knights of the Teutonic Order, where peasants were so clean they seemed to bathe multiple times a day and constantly washed their brightly colored clothes. So, watch Cruel Intentions at your own risk.