There’s No Birthday Party for Me Here: High School Movies

No thread that I can find--there should be one. (John Hughes gets three. He and high school movies are not one and the same.)

I watch a remaindered DVD of Easy A last night, vaguely recalling that it got good reviews. It’s kind of terrible, and when I checked back on a couple of reviews, they seemed to think it was lousy too. I must have glanced at one review and generalized.

I laughed once, at the Quizno’s guy. Emma Stone’s parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) are uniquely preposterous.

tucci and clarkson are all I really remember about that movie--they seemed like some kind of wish-fulfillment parents, more for any adults watching than teens.

They were so over the top, I guess that's where the humour was supposed to reside.

Off the top of my head, some obvious favourites:

To Sir with Love (not sure if this is technically high school, or more like a 7-12 situation), Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Virgin Suicides, Dazed and Confused, Carrie, American Graffiti, The Heart of the Game, Elephant, Election, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, Flirting, Clueless. I won’t count Rushmore, where there are clearly lots of primary/junior-aged kids around. The TV version of Friday Night Lights is as good as at least some of these.

Aw, I love Easy A. Thought the reviews were generally strong?

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/easy-a

Oddly, I kind of dislike Hughes, even though I like a lot of this genre.

Massacre at Central High
Three O'Clock High
Superbad
River's Edge

Mean Girls
Donnie Darko
Grease (where everyone in high school is 30!)
the Outsiders

the Faculty

I quickly glanced at the Voice and Slant reviews of Easy A, and both were pretty tepid.

I liked River's Edge better when I went back to it years later; still short of the first-rank for me. I liked Donnie Darko, need to look at it again.

If I include The Heart of the Game, I should also have Hoop Dreams. Debatable how much either of them is a high school movie, though.

River's Edge is all-time for me. Donnie Darko is such a weird one-hit-wonder of a film, I love it for it's idiosyncrasies (don't watch the director's cut)

a couple I think are shit:

Dead Poets Society
Napoleon Dynamite

Yeah, wasn't big on either of those. A grade 7 student of mine talked me into showing Napoleon Dynamite to the class; probably not a great idea, although I don't recall anything too crude.

I saw Wiseman's High School years ago; as I saw more and more of his films, it seemed to be more didactic and less interesting than where he later ended up. It's probably better than I remember, though.

I liked this from last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEz8pdxslYU

All The Right Moves really nails the vibe of High School Sports

The Myth of The American Sleepover--the first film by the It Follows dude--is something I screened recently. It's set at the end of a suburban Detroit summer, focusing on a bunch of teens trying to make the most of one of the last nights before school starts. Linklater-esque, a nice mix of the offhand and arty.

Don't forget High School II

tbh i've come to dislike a lot of these. heathers is still great, though.

relevant to this thread: hey everybody in nyc go see seventeen at bam in august. it is the best high school movie.

Has anyone else seen Love, Simon? I thought it was decent, though no better than that--the YA novel by Becky Albertalli that it is based on is richer and more emotionally satisfying, and most of the changes made for the film feel a bit pandering: a goofy fantasy dance sequence set to Whitney's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" replaces a poignant scene in the novel where the protagonist tests out his new identity by visiting a gay bar, and the film's modification of the novel's conclusion is ridiculous. The best performance and the most interesting character in the film is actually the antagonist: while he's committing what amounts to blackmail, in highlighting his (hetero) awkwardness alongside the obviously quite well-adjusted protagonist's angst over the closet, the film's empathy extends beyond its main character and projected audience.

I feel like a lot (which is to say, whether we get more gay-themed films targeted at a non-adult, arthouse or prestige audience) is riding on this film's box office performance, so I was more than a bit disappointed that the film not only debuted well below Black Panther (which is to be expected) but also a Christian-themed movie that I'd never heard of and a Tomb Raider reboot that no one asked for.

Here's MK on Love, Simon, which I just watched yesterday: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/queer-now-2018-love-simon/

that the book was titled Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda tells lots

It's funny to see my first post on this thread because just the other day I was thinking about how the shifting depictions of parents in teen movies over the years is like a dissertation waiting to be written. If I remember it right, Easy A is perhaps the high water mark for the savvy, funny parents clearly written by gen x adults who see themselves that way.