Summer is officially over and class is back in session, so it’s the perfect time to revisit some of my favorite movies that, collectively, encapsulate the schooling experience.
Whether illustrating growing pains in high school or depicting the real-world challenges of higher learning in college, there are several important rules all school-time movies must obey or break, and several essential topics that every meaningful classroom classic must touch upon—some focus on a few, but it’s no accident that the most influential and enduring films share a plethora of check-list items in common.
Here you’ll find plenty of peer pressure; ample defiance against obstinate authority figures and plenty of breaking the rules; lots of mixed emotions about puberty and crushes; loads of fun at the ludicrously posh home of the kid whose parents are perpetually on vacation; and scads of snobbish members of exclusive cliques, rowdy jock jerks, dweeby science nerds, and a legion of other general social outcasts, all of them learning to march to the beat of their own drum.
There is often a rivalry or camaraderie between a student and a teacher or mentor figure. Sometimes there’s a big sports game to win or an important party to organize, or perhaps there’s a ball-busting exam to conquer.
And don’t forget rampant experimenting with substances and premarital sex, and a rogues’ gallery of popular bullies who all need to be taught a lesson.
Crucially, the most memorable school movies tend to feature a hot list of the very best songs of their respective eras, full of anthems for the disaffected youth du jour and soul-plucking torch songs for the lovesick. Few remember the teen movies that don’t slap at least one bona fide radio hit on the soundtrack, but I’ll wager everybody who remembers the ’80s can name and sing along with the theme song from The Breakfast Club.
Before we begin, know right off the bat that, despite her legacy as the quintessential 1980s prom queen wannabe, Molly Ringwald starred in only three John Hughes movies.
I know, it seems like more, but it’s because she was just so darned perfect that she’s become the female face of the genre.
Similarly, regardless of his career-defining reputation as the characteristically snide rich boy, William Zabka portrayed the blonde, popular school bully only thrice.
I know, it seems like more, but he was just so darned handsome and perfect and smarmy in The Karate Kid that you wanted to shove your boot so far up his ass the heels would kick out his perfectly polished teeth.
Sixteen Candles (1984) / Pretty in Pink (1986)
These two painfully accurate fables of an awkward teenaged girl and her first true schoolboy crush account for two of Molly Ringwald’s three signature John Hughes roles.
Ringwald’s portrayal of Samantha Baker in Sixteen Candles, and Andie Walsh in Pretty in Pink cemented her as the poster girl for ’80s prom-night angst in much the same way Jamie Lee Curtis became the scream queen of Carter/Reagan-era horror flicks.
For Pretty in Pink, James Spader is appropriately smug and slippery as the de-facto bully/nemesis, Andrew McCarthy is adorable if vacuous as the designated dreamboat, and both Jon Cryer and Annie Potts are on hand as two sturdy rocks of the genre, the sensitive/wacky best friend and the wizened/kooky mentor/confidant.
Harry Dean Stanton’s tender portrayal of a devoted single father who always knows the right answers is the exception to the rule of teen-movie parenting (mom and dad figures are usually overbearing, comically aloof or just plain absent).
For Sixteen Candles, Paul Dooley is the trusty and present father figure, the rivalry is mainly between Samantha and her older sister who’s getting married, and the main conflicts involve the entire family forgetting Samantha’s birthday concurrent with Sam’s desire to earn the puppy-dog stares of dreamy jock Jake Ryan.
Added to the mix is a horny and persistent but ultimately endearing nerd (Anthony Michael Hall) and a politically incorrect exchange student named Long Duk Dong (immortalized by Gedde Watanabe).
Clueless (1995) / Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
In celebrating teen spirit, some school-aged films endure for showing with brutal and/or comical honesty just what kids do to blow off steam.
Director Amy Heckerling’s Clueless is an effervescent updating of Jane Austen’s novel Emma, and serves as a 1990s bookend to Heckerling’s ’80s Cameron Crowe-penned classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
They’re flip sides of the same jubilant album: both films deal with assorted teenage escapades and hiccups among the student body at an idealized California school; both boast a young and diverse cast of exciting newcomers with a few great character actors thrown into the mix; both demonstrate a sly wit and keen observation for the way real teens behave; and both feature a rapid-fire hit-list of contemporary and classic songs.
Risky Business (1983) / Say Anything… (1989) / Dazed and Confused (1993)
The most resonant teen tales deal with the crucial cusp-of-graduation question, “What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
Risky Business didn’t merely establish Tom Cruise as a force to be reckoned with, it stands as one of the most sharply observed and wonderfully written commentaries on suburban teen angst ever put to film.
Adhering to the credo, “Sometimes you’ve just got to say, ‘What the fuck,’ and make your move,” our suburban hero Joel Goodson, Princeton-bound, takes advantage of his parents being away on vacation, meets up with a call-girl and stumbles onto a money-making scheme that quickly perturbs the girl’s inconsolable pimp (Joe Pantoliano).
Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything… begins on the day of Lloyd Dobler’s (John Cusack) high school graduation, and traces the hours immediately after Commencement and through a wild overnight bash, when he finally lands a date with his longtime crush Diane Court (Ione Skye).
Summer romance soon blossoms, despite the objections of Diane’s sorta-bullying but definitely overbearing father (John Mahoney), and Diane’s plans to attend college overseas threaten to leave Lloyd back home in the dust. What’s an aspiring kickboxer to do?
Similarly, Richard Linklater’s pot-hazed ode to the Last Day of School, Dazed and Confused, touches on the great big “what ifs” looming beyond graduation, while simultaneously depicting with brutal accuracy the humiliations of school yard hazing rituals.
The film is set during the summer of 1976 and features a yellow bus full of the hottest and quirkiest young actors of the day, along with a sturdy playlist of classic party rock tunes.
The Breakfast Club (1985) / Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
You can’t discuss teen movies and not tip your hat to the late great John Hughes, and it’s no surprise that two more Hughes’ teen-centric movies are on my “Best Of” list.
The Breakfast Club is the quintessential “serious” John Hughes movie, and takes place during the course of a single Saturday. The characters are an assembly of five distinct teen archetypes: the popular princess; the weird space-cadet; the sensitive overachiever; the bully jock; and the angry rebel.
Thrown into the mix together during an all-day detention, they are forced to open their minds and discover for themselves that we’re all alike under our skin.
Ferris is the mirror image of The Breakfast Club, dealing obliquely with many of the same squirmy issues of teen angst and pressing questions about what to do with the future, but it’s a decidedly bubbly and idealistic view of an impossibly popular boy with a hard case of Senioritis.
Collectively, both films offer the definitive dual portrait of two types of school Principals—the feckless buffoon (Ed Rooney, played to perfection by Jeffrey Jones) and the implacable hard ass (no school master was ever meaner than Richard “Dick” Vernon, as personified by Paul Gleason).
National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) / Revenge of the Nerds (1984) / Back to School (1986)
The college experience comes down to these three comedy classics. Animal House is set in the pre-Vietnam era, and its soundtrack is full of early sixties ditties.
The rivalry between Delta House and their Aryan frat enemies provides much comic conflict, and the late John Vernon’s stone-cold turn as Dean Vernon Wormer makes for one of the cinema’s most despicable hard-noses.
Nerds is a ridiculously exaggerated look at the social structures of campus life, and even as a high-schooler I knew college wouldn’t really turn out to be like this.
Even so, Nerds is a deliciously satisfying tale of the underdog dweebs and social morons publically triumphing over the football jerks—and stealing their girls, to boot. The movie contains several classic sequences, some of them—“panty raid!”—far raunchier than the diluted hijinks you’ll typically find in today’s PG-13-oriented fare.
Speaking of which, the ebullient college romp Back to School is Rodney Dangerfield’s finest hour, yet the implied risky business is more subtle and the dialogue remains a safe PG-13—the film strategically spends its allotment of the word “fuck” three times, twice in a classic exchange during which Dangerfield mouths off to the real Kurt Vonnegut.
Here, a classic nemesis/snob/bully is portrayed by William Zabka, the third of three such turns (see also The Karate Kid and Just One of the Guys).
Heathers (1988) / Election (1999)
Few other films approach this pair of vicious black comedies for their summary encapsulation of the dark side of the High School Experience, specifically in depicting relentless competition and fierce peer pressure, and in recognizing all the ways a bitch will cut you.
In Heathers, Veronica (Winona Ryder) tries to assimilate with a trio of hallway divas each named Heather, but Veronica’s teen angst has a body count when her mysterious new loner rebel boyfriend J.D. (Christian Slater) demonstrates a decidedly more lethal response to the peer pressure wrought by pretty and popular bullies.
In Alexander Payne’s Election, the rules of teen cinema are tossed out of the window as the obsessively driven will step on others and/or stab them in the back in order to succeed. Matthew Broderick sends up his Ferris Bueller role by playing the genial mentor/teacher role who is secretly also the duplicitous bully, doing his darndest to thwart the campaign of Tracy Flick for Student Body President, just because she finally rubs him the wrong way.
Reese Witherspoon’s indelible turn as Tracy Flick is the last word in irritating overachievers, and is perhaps the actresses defining role. The script also broaches the subjects of sexual politics and illicit teacher/student liaisons, bitter sibling rivalry, puberty and/or sexual awakening, rebellion against the rules, and also features a direct descendant to Jeffrey Jones’ buffoonish Principal Ed Rooney, here played by Phil Reeves.
Hopefully you’re primed for some good viewing and ready for school to begin again.
And remember, “Pick Flick,” “Save Ferris,” just say “What the fuck,” and “Don’t you forget about me.”
