SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984) & THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985)
I’m no sociologist, but I’ll nevertheless hazard the following thesis: no matter how good any particular teen film may be, there’s nothing that compares with the high school movies you saw while you were actually IN high school. And so, no matter how good, say, American Graffiti or The Last Picture Show or Rushmore or American Pie may be (and yes, Commenters, we know we left all these ultra-worthy contenders off this week’s list, and apologize profusely!), they’ll never hold the same hallowed place in my heart as Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club, which I saw during my junior and (best of all) senior years at good ol’ M.H.S., home of the Middleboro Marching 100 and the Speech & Theater Workshop...GO SACHEMS!!!! WOO-HOO!!!! CLASS OF ’85 RULES!!!! Writer/director John Hughes also ruled way back then, before he tumbled into the bottomless vat of Cheez Whiz better known as his post-‘80s directing career. But, just like your goofy yearbook photo, his two best films are eternal: Molly Ringwald as wised-up, self-conscious everygirl Sam and Anthony Michael Hall’s noble Geek are Clearasil icons for the ages in the endlessly quotable '84 classic that established many if not most of the future clichés of the modern teen movie: the ironic, pop culture post-modernism, the clueless but caring parent/guardian and, of course, the climactic cast-of-thousands suburban blow-out. But as good as Sixteen Candles is, The Breakfast Club seemed even better at the time, if only because it gave my senior class “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” as our official swan song. Even when I was squarely in Hughes’ demographic, of course, I recognized the occasional pretentious, simplistic and overwrought moments of the '85 dramedy, and Ally Sheedy’s conversion from cool Goth to Emilio Estevez’s boring prep girlfriend still rankles...but looking back now, I can’t help feeling nostalgic for an era when teens could be still be captivated by a talky character study that played like a one-set, seven-character off-Broadway show with no gratuitous violence or nudity (except for the second big screen close-up of Molly Ringwald’s panties in as many years). Hey...hey...hey...hey!
HIGH SCHOOL (1969)
The cinema-verite documentarian Frederick Wiseman has spent the bulk of his career boiling down one American institution after another -- often in movies with generic-label titles such as Hospital, Juvenile Court, Basic Training, and Domestic Violence -- to reveal the lives being helplessly fed into the bureaucratic grinder. It stands to figure that high school would have been one of the earliest subjects on his list. This film, which was shot at Philadelphia's Northeast High School, conveys the experience of being trapped there for a typical day, and in the process pins to the wall the regimented drills, the impatience with nonconformity, imagination, or anything else that might take things off their carefully scheduled course, the seething resentment of the authority figures trying to hammer the kids into well-behaved, smiling cannon fodder. It was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry in the third year of that list's existence, but it might be a greater tribute to it that it was banned in Philadelphia for years because it made the educational process look dehumanizing and depressing.
LORD LOVE A DUCK (1966)
Probably many will automatically nominate Molly Ringwald or Winona Ryder for the title of high school movies' definitive prom queen, but for some of us, Tuesday Weld blows them all out of the water. The Drew Barrymore of her time -- besides having the weird name to have to explain to people, she was a veteran actress-model, supporting her family while coping with a drinking problem and a nervous breakdown, all before she was thirteen -- she was also a white-hot talent, an inventive actress who was both sexy and affecting even in the cheesy, early rock and roll exploitation pictures that served as her entry point into the movie business. She was twenty-three but still looked like a teen queen when she starred in this bizarre satire, directed by George Axelrod. She plays Barbara Ann Greene, a child of divorce (back when that was still supposed to be shameful) who wants to be loved by everyone but can't even crash the important girls' club she needs to join to take her first steps towards school-wide popularity, because she can't afford the twelve angora sweaters that are a non-negotiable requirement of establishing any girl's true worth. Luckily, she attracts the admiring attentions of Alan (Roddy MacDowell), who begins greasing the wheels for her steady ascent, by whatever means necessary: he's something between a wish-fulfilling genie and a psycho on the make. Before graduating forever from high-school age roles, Weld would follow Duck up with another cult classic, 1968's Pretty Poison, in which the roles were reversed: in that one, her frustrated young miss hooks up with a lonely young man (Anthony Perkins) with a history of emotional disturbance, who realizes too late that she's ensnared him in a murder plot. Once again, Weld demonstrates her ability to do the near-impossible by making her character believable and seductive while managing to make Tony Perkins look like the sane one.
ELECTION (1999)
Alexander Payne's movie, closely adapted from Tom Perrotta's slim, sharp novel, may be the best of all attempts to use high school life as a metaphorical testing ground for everything that comes after it. Matthew Broderick explodes his Ferris Bueller persona as the upstanding, much-admired high school teacher who preaches the virtues of democracy until it becomes clear that, unless checked, democracy is going to make a terrible mistake and reward Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), the superachiever student who is the personification of everything that he hates and thinks is wrong with the world (i.e., everything that makes other people more successful than him). Broderick hasn't had a role half as good since, and neither Witherspoon nor Chris Klein (as the sweet golden boy dope of a jock who's Tracy's natural enemy in spite of himself) has ever been better, but a special Screengrab Missing in Action shout-out goes to Jessica Campbell, the young actress (sixteen at the time) who gives a wonderful performance as Klein's lonely, frustrated lesbian sister, whose acting out turns her into the anarchist heroine of the student body elections, and who, except for a couple of low-profile TV and movie roles, hasn't been seen since.
Click Here For Part One, Part Two & Part Three
Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent