My Top 10 High School Movies

You might think that being a high school teacher would make watching movies about high school unbearable, but it’s quite the opposite.  I’ve always enjoyed seeing how movies portray high school life on the big screen.  Here are my favorites:

10. Mean Girls.  I am so glad that I was never a high school girl.  This movie is terrific, really funny, and sadly I have seen real-life versions of pretty much every character in this movie.

9. The Class.  I’m pretty sure this won’t be on anyone else’s top 10 list, but it is fascinating.  It’s a French movie, based on an autobiography of a guy who spent a year as a language teacher in Paris.  It’s shot in a documentary style, starring the guy who wrote the book, and to be honest, when I watched it I thought it was a documentary.  Everything about it is incredibly real, and you can tell that the experiences portrayed in the movie are based on things that actually happened.  The guy isn’t a great teacher, but he has some good qualities, and it’s fascinating to watch his interactions with this racially and ethnically diverse group of kids.  It might be too slow for some, but especially for anyone that’s a teacher, I’d highly recommend it.

8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  The most recent entry on this list, it’s a far cry from a John Hughes movie or any teen comedy.  It deals with some heavy issues facing high school students in a way that is never pandering or cheesy.  Beautiful film.

7. Boyz ‘n the Hood. Whether you think of this as a ‘high school’ movie or not, this is a truly powerful film.  It’s the story of a couple of friends growing up in south central LA, in a neighborhood infested with gangs and violence.  One young man is a gifted student, the other a gifted athlete.  Both seem destined to do big things if they can make it out.  It’s a very different world from the high school I teach in, but a terrific film nonetheless. 

6. The Breakfast Club. No list of great high school movies would be complete without a couple of John Hughes movies.  When I was in high school this was the ‘classic’ high school movie that everyone loved, but I wondered if it might be a little dated now. I went back and watched it last year, and came to the conclusion that it was still pretty relevant.  Cell phones and social media might have changed how they communicate, but most of the issues that high school students deal with isn’t too different than in 1985 when this came out.

4. (tie) Hoosiers. Some might consider these sports movies rather than high school movies, but in my mind, they are both.  For a lot of people like myself, playing sports and being a part of a team is one the biggest defining factors in the high school experience.  I’m probably drawn to these two films because basketball is the sport I played and coach.  Hoosiers is my favorite sports movie of all-time, but I’ll talk about that on a different list.  I used to watch this movie with the high school teams I coached almost every year.  When you play on a team together, there is a bond that is built through time, sweat, and battles shared together on the court or field.  In college and professional sports this is also true, but for high school athletes it isn’t also about scholarships or money, it’s about the sport and about the team.  This movie captures that purity in a beautiful way. One of the great underdog movies ever made.

4. (tie) Hoop Dreams This movie will probably end up on three different top 10 lists: high school, sports, and documentary, so I probably don’t need to say too much about it here.  The movie follows two young basketball stars through their high school basketball careers.  The arc of their stories is remarkable, with more ups and downs than most scripted movies.  Roger Ebert called this the best movie of the 90’s, and one of the best films about American life that he ever saw. I’d have to agree.

3. Napoleon Dynamite. Certain actors are born to play one part.  For John Heder, Napoleon Dynamite was that part.  I’ve seen him in several other movies, each one worse than the last, because in every one he’s trying to recreate the fleeting glory that was Napoleon Dynamite – his one moment of perfection. There are too many sweet things to name about this movie, but I will try to name a few:
-The Happy Hands Club
-Nunchucks
-A liger
-Sweet jumps
-Napoleon trying to go home sick for the day because he doesn’t have any chapstick.
-Uncle Rico’s van
-Pedro’s election campaign (including the Vote for Pedro T-shirts and making a piñata of his opponent).
-Napoleon’s dance moves

2. Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. It’s pretty tough not to put this at the top of the list.  The best John Hughes movie, and easily the most fun of any movie on this list. To this day I get kids telling me this is one of their favorite movies.  There are a lot of great scenes and a lot to love about the movie, but I think the reason so many people like it boils down to the fact that there is something universally appealing about the idea of skipping school and having one of the greatest days of your life with a couple of your best friends.

1. Rushmore. This movie made me a Wes Anderson fan for life.  It isn’t necessarily a realistic portrayal of what high school is like, but it does a better job than any movie I’ve seen of capturing a high schooler’s passion, exuberance, and desire to belong.  Max Fisher is one of my all-time favorite movie characters.  He’s a fool and makes all kinds of bad decisions, but he is also so pure, and full of life. This is one of my all-time top ten movies.
"What's the secret Max?"
"The secret, I don't know...I guess you've just gotta find something you love to do and then...do it for the rest of your life.  For me, it's going to Rushmore."

Extra Credit: The movie that I think captures the most realistic version of American high school life is a documentary that came out in 2008 called American Teen.  It didn’t get a lot of publicity, and I don’t think most people liked it as much as I did, but I thought it did a great job of following five kids through their year at an Indiana high school.  Each kid they follow fits a certain stereotype, but the movie allows us to see much more of who the kids are than just their label.  If you’ve spent any time in a high school recently as a teacher or student, you’ll recognize some of the kids and the issues they struggle with.

Clueless.  Almost put this one in my top 10. This movie has an earnest charm that makes it a lot of fun.  I remember thinking at the time that Alicia Silverstone would end up being a huge star, but it was actually the co-stars, Brittany Murphy and Paul Rudd who ended up having more memorable careers.

Freaks and Geeks. Series like this are the reason they invented Netflix.  If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and get started.  It only lasted one season, but during that season it was the best tv show about high school ever created.  I would put this ahead of anything else on my top 10 movie list.  This was the first (and probably the best) thing that Judd Apatow ever did.  You’ll recognize a lot of the actors, before they were famous (Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Seagall), and it was truly great.

Nope, not on the list:
16 Candles and Say Anything. Two more of John Hughes better known teen movies, but I just never loved either of them.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I didn’t see this when I was a teenager, so I don’t have the same association with it that a lot of you do.  I saw it for the first time a couple of years ago, and I thought it was ok.  It was funny, but as an adult, I just didn’t think it was all that.

Heathers. I watched part of this around when it came out, but never watched the whole thing until last year.  It has its moments, especially in the first third of the movie, but I just didn’t enjoy it that much.  I know it’s supposed to be a dark comedy, but man, it’s really dark. 

Dead Poets Society I know people that thought this was a life-changing movie.  I am not one of them.  I thought it was good, but that it took itself a little too seriously, like most ‘serious’ Robin Williams movies do.

Donnie Darko. This is a fascinatingly weird movie.  There’s a reason it’s a cult classic, but it’s another one that I only thought was good, not great.