Best Teen Movies To Enjoy This Holiday Season
School is an intricate part of any person’s childhood, laying the foundation for many children’s best memories while also conversely plaguing them with some of their worst anxieties. It’s a confusing time in any person’s life as young adults come to terms with the person they want to be.
For as many teen movies that have been released over the years, few films have been properly able to depict the positive and negative aspects of teenagers’ daily lives. Every so often, though, a teen movie will come around that will portray the nuances of a teen’s lifestyle with complete justice — the angst they feel in bidding childhood goodbye and taking on adult responsibilities and the freedom they feel as they grow up.
These movies celebrate youth, respect it, and present the problems of teenagers and young adults as real and valid, very much on par with the completely different but equally troublesome issues many adults face in their daily lives.
15. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Precocious high school student Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) decides to play hooky from school with his anxiety-ridden best friend (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend (Mia Sara). As they head out on a carefree trip to Chicago, they dodge their authoritarian principal (Jeffrey Jones) and Ferris’s rule-abiding sister (Jennifer Grey). All the while, Ferris instructs his friends on how to have fun.
Great Soundtrack
An undisputed classic from John Hughes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is pure ‘80s joy, punctuated by a great soundtrack, excellent pacing, and one of Hughes’s best and most humorous scripts. Like all of Hughes’s films, it tackles issues of burgeoning adulthood, but it also pushes the simple lesson of seizing the moment and enjoying life to its fullest while you still can.
14. 10 Things I Hate About You
Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a new student enrolled in a Seattle high school, where he meets and falls in love with the popular Bianca (Larisa Oleynik). Standing in the way of a proper date is an ultimatum set by Bianca’s father: the only way for Bianca to start dating is for her older, more mean-spirited sister (Julia Stiles) to also begin seeing someone on a romantic basis.
Effortlessly Enjoyable Teen Movie
A modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of Shrew, 10 Things I Hate About You is one of the more effortlessly enjoyable teen movies that came out after the equally entertaining Clueless. It cleverly updates Shakespeare’s text, offering an interpretation of it for the modern generation — plus, it has a young Heath Ledger in one of his most famous roles.
13. Eighth Grade
Kayla (Elsie Fisher) is a young middle schooler struggling to overcome her shyness and make a lasting impression on her classmates in the final week of middle school.
Pressure To Blend In
To be fair, Eighth Grade is not so much a nostalgic look at youth and the freedom we experience as budding teens. Instead, it feels more like a mundane horror movie, analyzing the terror and pressure kids feel to blend in, lest they go through those formative years alone.
But as Eighth Grade points out, standing out is never a bad thing, and accepting who you are and where you come from is the ultimate sign of growth for healthy, happy young adults.
12. American Pie
As their graduation draws near, four friends make a pact to lose their virginity before they leave high school.
Laughs and Grossout Comedy
Though a little too low-brow for some, it’s impossible not to deny American Pie’s popularity among 2000s teenagers. At the very least, you can say the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, focusing more exclusively on laughs and gross-out comedy than on building a film with a central life lesson (but hey, isn’t laughs over lessons what childhood’s all about?).
11. Superbad
Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) are two best friends trying to enjoy a night of partying in the hopes of losing their virginity before college.
Principle Cast Members
Slightly less raunchy than American Pie, Superbad is the movie that gave rise to almost everyone involved — from principal cast members like Cera, Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Bill Hader to co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
Like Goldberg and Rogen’s other collaborations like Pineapple Express and This Is the End, it feels like you’re watching a group of close friends making a movie, their fun jumping through the screen and infecting any viewer lucky enough to watch their films.
10. Booksmart
Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are two academic overachievers who realized they never actually enjoyed themselves during their four years of high school. On the cusp of graduation, the two BFFs embark on a night of worry-free fun and partying to make up for lost time.
Having Fun and Enjoying Life
Booksmart feels like the perfect follow-up to a movie like Superbad. Not only does it follow a similar plot and star Beanie Feldstein (the sister of Jonah Hill), it underscores many of the same messages as Superbad: mainly the importance of having fun and enjoying life free from adult restraints.
9. Lady Bird
“Lady Bird” MacPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is a high school student who longs for independence and the freedom to express herself in her own way — putting her at odds with her more traditional, blue-collar mother (Laurie Metcalf).
A Character Study
More of a character study than a teen movie, Lady Bird was a tender look at teens' phases as they try to find out who they are and who they want to be in life. Greta Gerwig’s phenomenal debut takes us from the heights of teen angst and rebelliousness to eventual reconciliation with estranged parents.
8. Clueless
Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is a wealthy, popular, and preppy high school student who decides to use her vast influence to help others, namely her “tragically unhip” new classmate (Brittany Murphy).
A Massive Cult Following
The big teen movie of the 1990s, Clueless takes the classic novel, Emma, and reworks it for then-modern Californian culture. Like 10 Things I Hate About You, such a change allows for a cleverly original take on Jane Austen’s beloved masterpiece, leading to a massive cult following, a spin-off TV series, and a number of YA books focusing on Cher.
7. Mean Girls
Sixteen-year-old Cady (Lindsay Lohan) begins her first year of public school after years spent being homeschooled by her parents in Africa. Finding high school not at all as she imagined it would be, Cady becomes involved with the school’s most popular students — including the cruel Regina (Rachel McAdams).
A Satire of High School Politics
Popularity is an ever-present worry at the back of so many teenagers’ minds. A movie that satirizes high school politics, Mean Girls was a brilliant illustration of teenage cliques in the mid 2000s. Like Clueless before it, it became nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon, building the careers of Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, and Amanda Seyfried, among many others.
6. Easy A
Olive (Emma Stone) is an intelligent high school student who begins using a web of lies and gossip for her own financial gain, thriving off the rumor that she’s slept with many of her fellow students.
How Gossip Shapes Students' Identities
Carrying on with the idea of taking centuries-old novels and setting them against the backdrop of modern high schools, Easy A borrows plenty of inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous work, The Scarlet Letter, mixing in elements of classic ‘80s teen movies from John Hughes.
The result is a pretty brilliant mashup that explores the issue of promiscuity and how it impacts popularity among teenagers, as well as how gossip shapes students’ identities in high school’s rumor-heavy atmosphere.
5. American Graffiti
On the last night of summer vacation in 1962, a group of teenagers get into all kinds of misadventures involving late-night parties, dates, and casual cruises around town.
American Graffiti wasn’t George Lucas’s first film, but it was the first movie that made audiences and Hollywood financiers stand up and take notice of the young filmmaker for the first time.
Boyhood Days in The 1950s
A loving portrait of Lucas’s boyhood days in the 1950s — when the cars were fast, the movies were drive-ins, and Wolfman Jack was howling on the radio — it set the stage for practically every big teen movie that followed (many of which we highlight).
4. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Taking the avenue pioneered by Lucas’s American Graffiti, Fast Times at Ridgemont High follows several high school students and the complex situations they find themselves in over the school year.
Meaningful Love in an Uncertain World
What Lucas did for the ‘50s and ‘60s, screenwriter Cameron Crowe did for the ‘80s, analyzing the youth culture of Gen X, the surfer movement, and the idea of finding meaningful love in the uncertain world of high school romance.
Containing Sean Penn’s most recognizable role — as the perpetually drugged-out Spicoli — many of its stars would go on to achieve massive success in their later careers, including Penn, Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, and Forest Whitaker.
3. Dazed and Confused
On the last day of school in 1976, a group of incoming seniors and up-and-coming freshmen spend the day celebrating the start of summer vacation.
An Influential '90s Indie Film
Following in the footsteps of American Graffiti and Fast Times, Dazed and Confused was an influential ‘90s indie film that turned the clocks back to the swinging ‘70s. Ditching the more dour portrayals of teenagers of the ‘80s, it’s as carefree and relaxing to watch as the ‘70s themselves were to experience.
2. Rebel Without a Cause
Jim Stark (James Dean) is a troubled young man new to town. Given one more chance to quell his rebellious ways by his argumentative parents, he soon finds solace in the company of his similarly dejected best friend (Sal Mineo) and teenage romantic interest (Natalie Wood).
Prototypical Teen Movie
In no uncertain terms, Rebel Without a Cause is the prototypical teen movie — the film that started the entire genre in the first place. Even today, James Dean’s performance will forever go down as the definitive picture of a teen still trying to figure out who he is — torn apart by his toxic family and shunned by his peers.
1. The Breakfast Club
Five teenagers from different social cliques slowly begin to bond and confront their complicated backgrounds as they serve out a Saturday detention together.
A Teen Movie That Has It All
John Hughes’ most famous film, The Breakfast Club has it all: comedy, humor, relatability, and precedence, no matter which future generation comes along to view it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a jock, a punk, an outcast, a nerd, or a popular girl — The Breakfast Club is tailor-made for all viewers, addressing the underlying traumas so many kids experience and try to bottle up.
It really is a one-of-a-kind movie, as iconic in its entirety as that famous image of Judd Nelson raising his fist in triumph.
