Top 50 teenage/high school movies

Great thread, my favorite genre of movies.

Agree with the Breakfast Club/Fast Times combo. Also agree that Varsity Blues, The Outsiders, One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead need to be on there. Maybe that's just my 80s/90s bias talking.

I think Thirteen should be on that list, but it's not specifically high school, so I guess not. Same with Welcome to the Dollhouse.

Election was a great movie. Story of my high school years, minus the sleeping-with-the-teacher part.

 

I've seen 22 of those films. I add my kudos for Election. Reese Witherspoon is the dictionary definition of passive/aggressive. And Clueless was a movie I enjoyed a lot, but face it, it was people supposedly 16 acting 26 or 36.

 

I was seven when Fast Times came out. It's a great movie. It's more realistic and interesting than most teen mpovies, because there's no artificial plotline about "coming of age" or any bullcrap. It's like high school was: a series of days that you just try to get through and before you know it, it's over.

The book was excellent as well.

I still chuckle at the failed TV series, that had Patrick Dempsey as Mike Damone and CSI dude as Mark Ratner.

 

Blackboard Jungle.

 

No Footloose?! What the hell??!

As for Breakfast Club, I loved it, but in a cheesy way. It resonates far less with me now than it did 20 years ago. I like Hughes, but he got more paint-by-numbers with every movie. To me, everything ends too neatly and safely in Breakfast Club. He dipped his toes in some dangerous territory with the group therapy scene, but then things ended in too tidy a fashion for me.

Heathers is no. 1 on my list and it laps the field. that movie, I can still watchd 15 years after high school and remember how achingly familiar it was/is. Nothing will ever top that movie.

Fast Times is a clear no. 2. That the entire movie centers around a mall, to me, makes it a timeless classic. And as junkie said, the soundtrack is several degrees beyond awesome.

 

I guess you probably would want to see that one on there.

 

THAT'S the movie I remember seeing in a college class that I was going to mention, except that I couldn't remember what it was called. A definite top 20 film.

 

And what the fuck?! No Red Dawn?

Buncha high school kids save us from those red commie bastards and they can't even land on the top 50 teen movies of all-time?! Without those heroes we'd be speaking Russian!!

(Can't believe I beat Hoops to this)

 

WOLVERINES!

 

IJAG already loves you. No need to keep trying.

 

No, he definitely needs to keep trying. The Billy Squier thing is a big roadblock.

 

It assures him he's not the wimpiest guy around.