I would have wondered after your answer.
Well, then, I can’t really argue. BC and D&C are my two faves. I’d like to get it to load, though. I love crap like this.
Agreed. Blackboard Jungle set the standard for this type of genre.
No Not Another Teen movie? Feh!
(I’m only half-kidding.)
I’d put The Breakfast Club much lower on the list, and Pretty in Pink much higher. The thing that bugs me the most about Breakfast Club is how Molly Ringwald’s character forgives Bender so quickly for how he treats her- I mean, he stuck his face in her crotch (this was before they were a couple) and she acted like it was normal!
Maybe that’s what I should do next time I see an attractive woman: I’ll just sneak up and put my face between her legs and then she’ll become my girlfriend.
Aaaagh, some of my favorites don’t even make the list -
Better Off Dead (would have been in my personal top 10)
One Crazy Summer
Kidz
How I Got Into College
Secret Admirer
Can’t Buy Me Love
OK, three of my six are Savage Steve Holland movies, but he is a 80’ film god.
School Ties?
Three O’ Clock High?
Remember the Titans?
Dump the half dozen or so films I’ve never even heard of:
Gregory’s Girl?
Get Real?
High School ?
WTF
Ok, hell with it – I’ll take the bullet and put the list together.
Spoiler boxed for those who wish to go through the annoyance of reading 19 pages for this info:
- Splendor in the Grass
- Sixteen Candles
- Just One of the Guys
- Napoleon Dynamite
- Flirting
- My Bodyguard
- Can’t Hardly Wait
- Stand and Deliver
- Fame
- Can’t Buy Me Love
- Risky Business
- The Virgin Suicides
- Bye Bye Birdie
- Friday Night Lights
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Brick
- Get Real
- Hoop Dreams
- Scream
- The Karate Kid
- Bring It On
- Gregory’s Girl
- Back to the Future
- To Sir, With Love
- Pretty in Pink
- Hoosiers
- Rushmore
- Cooley High
- American Pie
- Grease
- Dead Poets Society
- The Last Picture Show
- Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
- Peggy Sue Got Married
- Lucas
- Carrie
- Donnie Darko
- High School
- Mean Girls
- Say Anything
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Election
- Boyz N the Hood
- Clueless
- American Graffiti
- Heathers
- Rebel Without a Cause
- Dazed and Confused
- Fast Times at Ridgemont High
- The Breakfast Club
Right next to Porky’s II on the “Not on the Top 50 List” list, and rightfully so.
I thought Hollywood Knights should have made the lower part of the list. Like Silenus I’d have switched the #1 and #2 spots, but possibly for less noble reasons. Two less noble reasons. Both of which were glorious and deserving of more screen time.
Oooh…good one. But apparently not American enough.
I can agree with most of it, but Breakfast Club at number 1??? Better than Rebel Without a Cause? Better than Heathers? Better than Fast Times at Ridgemont High? Better than American Graffiti??? I’d move it down to ten and movie the rest of them up a notch.
So, if you haven’t seen it — it’s not worth seeing, right?
(P.S. I’ve seen Gregory’s Girl and High School, and yes they belong on the list.)
Wow. Solipsitic much?
Did I say that? No. I simply said there are other high school movies which might make a better choice for top 50.
While Breakfast Club is nowhere near the best movie on the list, it is the quintessential High School Movie, just because of how it embrases all stereotypes. I was a bit too old when it came out (24) but not old enough to have forgotten what those teens years really felt like. Hughes may have cardboard characters, played by not very accomplished actors who deliver their lines awkwardly, but the again, teenagers often behave awkwardly and life, when you’re living thorugh those years, tend to be all black or white, all good or evil. Being nuanced and insightful is not part of being 16. I think this is why the movie works so well and deserves being #1.
The list makers don’t seem all too critical about their definition of ‘high school movie’. Anything that takes place in a high school seems fine to be fine by their standards.
For me, a high school movie is where the scenario being a high school fills an important *point *or part of the plot (as in Breakfast Club) and isn’t just where the story happens to take place (as in Carrie).
Nah, Gregory’s Girl deserves its place - top ten probably. I was pleased to see Dazed and Confused, American Graffiti and Clueless up there. Very good films.
I know what you mean, but as a starting point for the list it’s hard to see what else they could have done.
Actually, it’s quite important that “Carrie” be set in a high school; the coming-of-age and high school outcast themes are rather central to the story.
If the High School the list is referring to is the Frederick Wiseman documentary, then there is no film you can think of that deserves to be on that list more (even the very good Blackboard). In fact, #13 is too low.
Another omission from the list: All The Right Moves
Should have been somewhere in the top 50.
Better Off Dead should definitely be on that list. I’m glad to see Heathers in the top 5.