‘Cruel Intentions’ Review: Prime Video Reboot Is Too Boring to Offend

The 18th century French novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” has withstood dozens of adaptations to stage and screen, including the prestigious 1988 film “Dangerous Liaisons” and the cheesy yet beloved 1999 teen film “Cruel Intentions.”

With Prime Video’s new eight-part “Cruel Intentions” series remake, author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ story finally hits the wall. Here, both setting and story seem outdated, with the writers’ bids to stay true to skeevier elements of the novel and (especially) 1999 movie conflicting with attempts to update storylines for a modern audience.

The show opens at a stately, vaguely Southern-looking mansion filled with overdressed young women — a promising start for fans of the similarly sorority-set “Scream Queens” or of “American Horror Story: Coven,” or even “The Bachelor.”

But the new “Cruel Intentions” does not yield any supernatural or crime thriller chills, or even enough backstabbing among romantic rivals to inspire us to pick a side. Instead, it focuses entirely on the inner workings of the sorority and its brother fraternity at a venerable Washington, D.C.-area university. The series even devotes a substantial storyline to the frat’s books being audited for frivolous party expenses.

Promised excitement, or at least beer pong, but we receive an Excel tutorial instead.

The sorority and fraternity hold parties where nobody has fun, because everyone is too worried Greek life will be disbanded due to a hazing incident the year before. To combat this possibility, snooty sorority president Caroline Merteuil (Sarah Catherine Hook, from Netflix’s “First Kill”) enlists her oversexed step brother, Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess) to help lure the U.S. vice president’s freshman daughter, Annie (Savannah Lee Smith, from Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot) as a member. Caroline knows that if Annie pledges her sorority, the university would not dare throw it out.

Show creators Phoebe Fisher and Sarah Goodman hired a more diverse cast than the 1999 film contained, and they give their characters motivations for their schemes beyond simply degrading women — the focus of too many iterations of this story. Yet amid these more progressive moves, Fisher and Goodman also, shockingly, retained the incest storyline from the movie.

Caroline and Lucien are just as flirtatious and touchy as Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Kathryn and Ryan Phillippe’s Sebastian were as stepsister and brother in the film. In this version, similar to the last, Caroline promises Lucien that he finally can have sex with her if he succeeds in seducing Annie.

Was it considered titillating 25 years ago to have step siblings lust for each other? Because now it plays less as a naughty sexual taboo than as pure, joyless trauma manifestation.

This setup also might have hit differently in the film because its tone was so winking, bordering on farce. Characters did and said outrageous things almost entirely to see the reactions of other characters, and the actors telegraphed throughout that they were mostly having a goof.

The streaming version rarely provokes laughs, as it tries to make characters more sympathetic by giving them frankly unnecessary backstories, in the process showing the novel was not elastic enough to accommodate the series format.

Caroline behaves callously toward her puppyish sorority lieutenant, CeCe (Sara Silva), and everyone else she finds beneath her. She behaves the way she does, and also snorts cocaine in secret, we are shown, because Caroline’s mother (Claire Forlani) is cold and demanding. But we prefer Gellar’s cardboard villain to a villain whose bad behavior is attributed to cliches.

Yet Caroline does emerge as sympathetic because Hook, like the rest of this show’s young leads, outshines this material. Hook subtly shows Caroline’s insecurities even when Caroline is at her most manipulative, through quick flashes of doubt or guilt that humanize the character in ways the writing does not.

Silva plays CeCe — essentially Selma Blair’s role in the movie — as na?ve yet highly intelligent and loyal, a rare quality in this show’s fictional world. Smith gives Annie, the VP’s daughter, a regular-teen authenticity that her movie counterpart, Reese Witherspoon, could not pull off because she was already famous.

The biggest breakout is Burgess, a relatively unknown Aussie actor who sells us on his character over the course of several episodes. At first it is tough to buy Lucien, a Joseph Gordon-Levitt lookalike with a curly mullet, as irresistible to women. But Burgess brings such joy and good humor to the role that you start to welcome Lucien’s every appearance.

Our affection for Lucien cannot survive this show’s weird, abrupt ending, though. But hopefully, “Cruel Intentions” will be a springboard to greater things for its talented cast.

“Cruel Intentions” premieres on Prime Video on Thursday, Nov. 21.

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