The screenplay by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith is a modernization of William Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew, retold in a late-1990s American high school setting.

Ten years later, it was adapted into a television reboot, which ran for twenty episodes and featured Larry Miller reprising his role as Walter Stratford.

Cameron James, a new student at Padua High School in the Seattle area, immediately becomes smitten with beautiful and popular sophomore Bianca Stratford.

Geeky Michael Eckman warns him that she is vapid and conceited, and that her overprotective single father Walter, an obstetrician worried about teenage pregnancy, does not allow her or her shrewish older sister Kat, a senior, to date.

Kat is accepted to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, but Walter wants her to stay close to home and attend his alma mater, the University of Washington.

Although Kat is still angry with Patrick, he eventually wins her over by serenading her, accompanied by the Padua High School marching band, with a performance of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by Frankie Valli, and she returns the favor by assisting him in sneaking out of detention.

Their subsequent date turns romantic, but Kat becomes suspicious when Patrick insists that she accompany him to the prom, which she adamantly opposes.

For an assignment in which the students were tasked to write their own versions of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 141, Kat reads aloud a poem she composed, entitled "10 Things I Hate About You", revealing that she still loves and cares for Patrick.

Being a fan of teen films, the pair set out to find a classic play or myth to turn it into a contemporary high-school movie, eventually settling on The Taming of the Shrew, a comedy by William Shakespeare.

The song for the scene changed numerous times, almost being "I Touch Myself" by Australian rock band Divinyls, before "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by Frankie Valli was settled on.

The website's critics consensus states: "Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger add strong performances to an unexpectedly clever script, elevating 10 Things (slightly) above typical teen fare.

"[12] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

[13] Geoff Andrew from Time Out praised the film's leads, writing, "Stiles grows into her character, and Ledger is effortlessly charming.

[18] The costuming was praised by Vogue for being stylish and helping illustrate the divide between the Stratford sisters,[19] referring to the movie as a "time capsule" for 90's fashion.

Ledger was also nominated for an MTV Movie Award for Best Musical Performance for the song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You".

The film is often considered one of the greatest teen and romantic comedies of all time,[31][32][33] receiving praise for subverting expectations and having a feminist lead character.

[35] Kat's defiance for conventional feminine attitudes was seen as an "extreme" brand of feminism at the time, however is now retrospectively regarded as a progressive portrayal of an independent female character that challenged the traditional teen movie archetypes, aligning more closely with modern feminist ideals.

[36] The film is often regarded to be a cult classic due to the unconventional stereotypes resonating throughout generations and in youth culture years later.

[45] The story is retold as it is in the film, with each chapter written from the point of view of either Bianca, Cameron, Kat, Patrick, or Michael.

In October 2008, ABC Family ordered a pilot episode of 10 Things I Hate About You, a half-hour, single-camera comedy series based on the film.