A few years ago, for reasons I'm still struggling to fully understand, I made a list of the 10 best high school movies ever. (But you knew that, didn't you). Now Entertainment Weekly offers its list of the top 50, and much to my surprise, every one of my 10 is somewhere in there. I don't know if this reflects well on EW or poorly on me, but given how much thought I've put into this, I'm going to go with the former. Hell, they even found one great one that I'd forgotten (Gregory's Girl, #29).
For the record, here's my 10 best, and where they fell on EW's list:
1. Election [9]. The ultimate high school as metaphor for modern American life movie. Brilliant filmmaking too, as the director's commentary on the DVD helped me appreciate.
2. Fast Times at Ridgemont High [2]. If you haven't seen this in a while, you may be alarmed at how dark and emotionally honest it is. I enjoy pop confections like Clueless and Mean Girls [EW's 7 and 12 respectively; Clueless almost made my top 10] but they don't pack a funny-because-it's-true punch like this. Another one where the commentary track is worth a listen. You won't learn much, but Crowe and Heckerling are hilarious.
3. Last Picture Show [19]. I don't know how EW rated this below Rock N Roll High School, which I couldn't even finish. Don't they know the difference between a time capsule and a timeless classic? The still above (indeed, the whole scene) is the distillation of everything that makes high school movies great: thrills, vulnerability, insecurity, daring, self-invention, humiliation and sex.
4. Rushmore [24]
5. Dazed and Confused [3]
6. High School [13]. This is one of the two I was sure EW would overlook. Hard to find, but worth it if you can. Anderson obviously studied it before he made Rushmore.
7. Heathers [5]. My favorite movie when it came out, now slipped a little. It doesn't hold up quite as well as you'd like.
8. Say Anything [11]. Then again, I haven't seen it in many years, and it did come out the same time as Heathers.
9. Flirting [46]. The other one I thought EW would miss. It just barely made the magazine, but at least it placed higher than Napoleon Dynamite, which I kind of feared would be in their top 10.
10. Breakfast Club [1].
So again, kudos to EW for a well-considered list. Sure, I'll quibble with some of their placements (I'd put Ferris Bueller much lower than 10 and Can't Hardly Wait a bit higher than 44; I'm not sure how I feel about Harry Potter being there; and where's Saved?) but the only serious flaw in the list is a fondness for shlocky dramas: Rebel Without a Cause [4], Boyz N the Hood [8], Dead Poets Society [20].
Confidential to MI: Just One of the Guys comes in at 48 -- above Sixteen Candles! I saw it recently on your insistence and all I can say is, 48 sounds about right. There's a great story lurking in there somewhere (I think Shakespeare wrote it) and it's entertaining as a look back at 1985 (or rather, at what bad high school movies thought 1985 looked like), but it's fatally flawed by the horrible dialogue (I only laughed at one joke, although it was a nice big laugh) and the atrocious acting. This was even more of a problem than it would have been in another movie, because it was impossible to tell whether our heroine was supposed to be convincing as a guy, given how unconvincing she was as a girl. Also, I'm permanently scarred from the big reveal at the end.
Now for the movies on the list I haven't seen. Feel free to recommend or warn me off: Lucas, Cooley High, Get Real, Brick, Bye Bye Birdie, Can't Buy Me Love (actually I'm pretty sure I saw this in the theater, but I have no memory of it), Splendor in the Grass.
