High School According to the Movies
I don’t think media can stress the harshness of high school life even more. There are so many movies made about these much-talked-about four years that everyone has to go through. Here are a few movies that should remind you of your high school days – the good and bad times combined.
The Breakfast Club (1985). This is the favorite teen film of many. During detention, five stereotypical students meet and confess their troubles. This proves that no one, even the envied popular chic or the seemingly carefree slacker, can escape the pangs of high school life. Everyone has to face their demons, but the silver lining here is that you can always find friends who can ease the burdens.
Dazed and Confused (1993). Freshmen are trying to run away from the graduating batch that is ready to humiliate and hurt them as part of initiation into high school. In the first parts of the movie, you’ll think that high school has all these terrible and stupid traditions, but in the end you’re made to see how great being in high school is. This is the only time when you get to drink and smoke all night up until dawn without much to worry about.
Clueless (1995). The title alone is descriptive of how being a teenager feels like. Cher is the popular and fashionable high school girl who knows how to get her way. She knows how to go around her teachers and her dad. She even thinks she knows exactly what to do how to get a boyfriend, ending up realizing that she actually is clueless about love. This wraps up what it’s like to be teen. It’s either you have no idea, or you think you know but you actually don’t.
The Virgin Suicides (1999). If there’s one movie that shows how difficult it is to be a teenage girl, it’s this adaptation by Sophia Coppola. This is far from a chick flick and a feel good high school movie. It shows the weary lives of the Lisbon sisters, who under the control of their intensely strict mother, were stripped off reality and were kept from experiencing the limitless possibilities of being young. The need to get out, get a life, and be free is stressed in this film.
Detroit Rock City (1999). A group of high school KISS fans go to so much trouble to get to Detroit and watch their favorite band. Jeremiah had to get pass his overly strict and sanctimonious mom who thinks KISS is the music of the devil. Trip tried to scam a little kid into giving him his ticket. Lex sneaked his way into the backstage to no avail. And Hawk even stripped to get the money for the tickets. This is not only a comedy about four kids who would look stupid for a couple of tickets; this shows the passions and fanaticisms of youth that most of us lose as we grow old.
Election (1999). This is a film about the intertwined lives of a few students and a teacher in high school. Mr. McAllister was a great and acknowledged teacher, but secretly wants to bring the overachiever Tracy Flick down. He tries to do this by supporting a dense jock run against Flick in the student elections. The lives of these characters become defined by this seemingly insignificant high school election.
Mean Girls (2004). Tina Fey proved her genius in this film. Being home schooled, Cady got the attention of the Plastics as she steps in a typical high school for the first time. Cady spends so much time with the Plastics that she does not notice how she becomes a Plastic herself. Tina Fey wrote an excellent screenplay, putting comedy in the theory of the survival of the fittest.
High school can be a difficult time, but you have to admit that most of your unforgettable and fun memories were from those dreaded four years.
Relive your high school life, good or bad, in your flat screen TV.
