Amir here, bringing you Team Experience’s latest top ten list.
It’s hard to think of a genre that gets less respect than the high school film, but try contemplating a list of the best high school films of all time and a never-ending stream of classics seems to rush forward. That’s exactly what our team decided to do this month, and to make things difficult for ourselves, we expanded our horizons to include school films about kids of all ages, from all countries. After all, teenagers aren’t the only ones going back to school next week. What about the younger kids?
As it turned out, our team was more enthusiastic about this poll than any we had done before. With more ballots and more votes than ever before, this list was a real hoot for me to compile; and the range and quality of the films that were left off the final ten only serves to highlight the wealth of options at our disposal. From bonafide classics like Splendor in the Grass and If…, to influential foreign films like Zero for Conduct and Where Is the Friend’s Home?, to more recent films like Elephant and Perks of Being Wallflower, to documentaries like Hoop Dreams, back to school gives everyone with any cinematic taste something to savor. And those are just the stuff that didn’t make the cut! Well, those along with Grease, Boyz n the Hood, American Graffiti, Heathers, Wet Hot American Summer, Back to the Future, Dead Poet’s Society, and… you get the picture.
So, without further ado...
Team Experience’s Top Ten School Films
10. Bring It On (2000)
Bring It On is the rare high school comedy where social status within the school ecosystem is barely given a passing thought: the cheerleading world is an insular one, but not a superior or bigoted one. Male cheerleader Jan confirms that he "speaks fag" and no one is outraged or offended or disgusted. The mainly-white girl privilege of the Toros' school is given wonderful context by their rivalry with the East Compton Clovers, with the thievery of their routines an immediate scandal to new captain Torrance. The film deals smartly, deftly and hilariously with having this cultural appropriation whip the Toros illusion of dominance out from under their feet, feeding this into a celebration of ingenuity, invention and education as the team learn about a multitude of approaches to their craft. This may be Torrance's only success and passion in her schooling, but that doesn't mean for a second that it is without merit. Peyton Reed's film is also simply an enormous chunk of effervescent fun, chock-full of tart dialogue, cheer-tastic linguistic teen wordplay, and physical acrobatics that dazzle and amuse in equal measure. Fifteen years on, its transgressive feminist bent and sociocultural intelligence have maintained a sturdy base for a film that continues to make our spirit fingers dance. – David Upton
9. Dazed & Confused (1993)
“Cool” is a word that comes up frequently when describing Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. Said in a bit of a drawl, pouring from the lips of any of the plethora of characters in the film, the word is both perfect and reductive as a way to boil down Linklater’s film to its core. It’s been the director’s trademark to let the audience drop in on the conversations of others, such as Slacker, Waking Life, and his Celine and Jesse Forever Trilogy, but it’s in Dazed and Confused that we’re not merely eavesdropping on anxious, restless, lackadaisical, excited, furious, lusty, real teenagers; we get to be a part of those conversations. Every discussion is an open invitation from the characters to roll on up, crack open a beer, and talk about you and me and everyone we know. – Kyle Turner
8. The Breakfast Club (1985)
"...each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal."
Most high school movies present a vision of some mythical High School with sharply defined cliques and often cartoonishly drawn lines between them; or, even more magically, a group of friends that contains exactly one of each teenage stereotype. What makes The Breakfast Club so great, then, is that although it's even more contrived in putting together archetypal high school characters, it feels more true to the universal high school/teenage experience than any other film. Each one of us may not be ALL of those archetypes, nor do we have bits of them all within us. But what John Hughes understood perhaps better than anyone else, is that we are each more than whatever labels we get assigned by our peers. That's pretty powerful stuff, whether you're a teenager or an adult. And what's even better is that Hughes acknowledges that adults may be even worse about this than teenagers. No matter how old we get, The Breakfast Club serves as a reminder that empathy is what makes us the best versions of ourselves. Don't you forget about it! – Daniel Bayer
7. The Class (2008)
There's inspiring teacher dramas and then there's The Class, which is written by and stars a real life teacher, François Bégaudeau as "Mr Marin" and takes place over a single school year. He's inspiring specifically because he doesn't place himself on a pedestal, makes human mistakes, and can't begin to solve the the out-of-school dramas that plague so many of his students. Bégaudeau fictionalizies and dramatizes his own actual experiences which bear multiple similarities to popular "inspirational teacher dramas" without succumbing to their smoothed edges and reductive "white savior" complexes, as Mr. Marin struggles to connect with his multicultural students. One terrifically incisive scene has restless students wondering why his grammar examples default to generic names like"Bill" (why not an ethnic name?). The original French title Entre Les Murs translates to "Between the Walls" which is arguably a more accurate description of the film's ambitions. The Class is not just an inspirational teacher drama. Neither is it merely a portrait of this particular classroom in Paris (though we never leave the school grounds). It's both at once and also a portrait of education itself, with all its promises of personal growth, struggles for understanding, difficult communal dynamics, and frustrating bureaucracies. The last shot of an empty classroom stings and lingers. Not just because of the prismatic humanity it held during the school year and the film but the knowledge that it all starts again next year, with new faces and similar odds against success. – Nathaniel R.
6. The 400 Blows (1959)
Let’s take a moment to think about all the films — both great and grating — that have been made about sulky, sassy, and estranging boys in the 56 years since The 400 Blows. Have any of these films ever located such comparably varied, lively layers of humor and heartbreak within the personal predicaments of nascent boyhood? Even excluding Truffaut’s spare aesthetics and nimble montage, our first introduction to Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Antoine Doinel remains the criterion by so vigorously and attentively plumbing Antoine’s everyday existence for larger and, yes, universal effect: the family turmoil; the banal hilarity of all that classroom chaos; the unbreakable bond shared with Patrick Auffay’s René, heart-stirringly adorable without an ounce of pushy sentimentality. Truffaut got what too many of his imitators failed to realize: Antoine became a cinematic hero precisely because his creators respected his right to be just another ordinary and indecisive young boy. – Matthew Eng
5. Rebel without a Cause (1955)
Prior to WWII, teenage culture as we know it simply didn't exist. With the post-war emergence of rock and roll, drive-in movies, and the indulgence of a new generation that suddenly had time, technology, and cash all ready at their disposal, the life of a teenager was born. And from the cookie-cutter cul-de-sacs of the American suburbs created the nonconformist, rebelling against what had become the new normal. Certainly teen angst had been captured on film prior to the release of Nicholas Ray's 1955 seminal classic Rebel without a Cause, but after experiencing it through the brooding intensity of James Dean's charismatic Jim Stark, the outsider found its patron saint. That the young actor would die before the film was even released guaranteed that he would be memorialized in our minds forever young. A cigarette dangling from his lips, his red windbreaker with the collar popped, and a little boy lost look in his gaze that decades of troubled youths have recognized as their own. –Andrew Stewart
4. Carrie (1976)
“They are all gonna laugh at you”. That’s everybody’s nightmare in high school. It’s the universal fear we all carry around, that we will do something or say something that will trigger ridicule and shame. Brian de Palma takes that fear and turns it in a very real palpable nightmare that doesn’t quit. Add to that confusion about religion, awkward teenage bodies, sex and you got one hell of a potent horror story. To add even more horror there is the mother; the manifestation of all of Carrie’s fears and insecurities and all the societal and religious pressures she’s feeling. No wonder she rebels and tries to kill her. Furthermore, Carrie is enduring because of the incredible performance at its center. Sissy Spacek was in her mid-20s when Carrie was filmed, but she embodies the reality of being a teenager, and all the discomfort it entails, with expert ease. When “the crazy” starts to trickle in, she grounds all the fantastical and horrific elements as this one young woman’s confusion and frustration with those around her who are cajoling her into serving their own dubious agendas. Isn’t that exactly what high school feels like? – Murtada Elfadl
3. Clueless (1995)
Clueless has every element of a perfect teen movie: irresistibly quotable dialogue, trend-sparking clothing, dreamy guys, makeover montages, a killer soundtrack. Amy Heckerling's film has certainly never suffered from being underappreciated – as the annual wave of retrospectives and reunion specials and oral histories prove – but like many of the best 'teen movies' it rarely gets credit for being a great movie, or for that razor-sharp screenplay, or the expert tonal balance of satire and earnestness. It's a worthy adaptation of a literary classic and a fluffy comedy, a send-up of teen culture that also loves and respects its young characters. At its centre is a small miracle of a performance from Alicia Silverstone, playing a valley girl whose interest in shopping and boys is secondary to her principal character dilemma: deciding what kind of person she wants to be. Was Clueless ever anywhere but #1 on my ballot? As if. – Margaret de Larios
2. Mean Girls (2004)
One has to try pretty hard not to love Mean Girls. The 2004 blockbuster gave the world yet another reminder that “girls comedies” can rake in the dough and introduced us to Tina Fey’s edgy, feminist, bubble-wrap-light voice (though we should not totally discount director Mark Waters, who also gave us 1997’s House of Yes). Its story of a girl facing down the predatory pink-wearing conformists of Midwestern high school life after spending twelve years in Africa hones in on that aspect of school stories that so often makes them relevant to audiences of all ages: friendship. Cady’s story is not some bullshit path to “finding herself.” When Cady finally, triumphantly denounces the titular lasses, she’s not perpetuating the cycle of girls judging girls. What she also means is, it’s not me it’s you: I don’t like who I am with you. It’s a good lesson. – Kyle Stevens
1. Election (1999)
Not just a brilliant satire of American presidential politics, Alexander Payne’s Election also happens to be a sharp-eyed, darkly hilarious portrait of how high school politics serves as both an echo (for the adults) and a preview (for the students) of the arbitrariness of the outside world. No one who has gone to high school in the U.S. can fail to recognize the archetypes embodied by Reese Witherspoon’s intensely annoying go-getter, Chris Klein’s happy-go-lucky jock, or Jessica Campbell’s angry, disaffected outsider – or Matthew Broderick’s outwardly well-intentioned teacher, inwardly cross-hatched with subconscious resentments. The genius of Election is that they all emerge as fully realized characters, all of whom we sympathize with at least a little even as we laugh at their mishaps and follies. Perhaps it’s because, to paraphrase a quote from another great high school movie, there’s a little of all of these characters in all of us. – Lynn Lee
What's your favorite school movie and do you love all of these?