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Election (1999)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
The sharpest film here about ambition, and the one that changes most when you rewatch it as an adult. Reese Witherspoon's Tracy Flick is the overprepared student running for student government president, Matthew Broderick is the civics teacher who decides to stop her, and Alexander Payne makes it painfully clear that the grown-up is the one behaving like a child.
Adapted from Tom Perrotta's novel and set at a high school in Omaha, Nebraska, it earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The comedy is cringe rather than slapstick, and it is frank about sex, so this is very much an adult's film about teenagers rather than one to share with them.
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Mean Girls (2004)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Tina Fey wrote it after reading Rosalind Wiseman's self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes, a guide to how teenage girls build and police cliques, and the research shows. Lindsay Lohan's Cady arrives at a new school, is adopted by the Plastics, and discovers that taking them down means becoming one of them.
For adults the treat is how precise it is about social power: the rules about wearing pink on Wednesdays, the Burn Book, the way a compliment can be an attack. Fey also plays the math teacher who gets the best grown-up lines. Choose Mark Waters's 2004 original over the 2024 musical remake, which loses much of the bite.
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Clueless (1995)
6.9/10on IMDb
Released
Amy Heckerling loosely moved Jane Austen's Emma to a Beverly Hills high school, and the result is the smartest "dumb" comedy ever made about a rich girl learning she is not the center of the universe. Alicia Silverstone's Cher is a meddling matchmaker who is somehow lovable rather than insufferable, which is the whole trick of Austen's heroine too.
Adults will catch how much the film knows about its world, and how its affection for every character never curdles into mockery. The one wrinkle that reads differently now is that Cher's eventual love interest is her former stepbrother, played by Paul Rudd, though the film treats it lightly.
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Heathers (1989)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
The pitch-black answer to every cozy clique movie. Winona Ryder's Veronica is tired of serving the three Heathers who run her school, and Christian Slater's brooding new boyfriend offers her a far more permanent way out. Daniel Waters's script treats murder, suicide and the media's appetite for teen tragedy as material for satire, and it is still savagely quotable.
It flopped at the box office and found its audience later as a cult film, which suits a movie this hostile to popularity. Be ready for jokes built on real violence at a school; some viewers will find that harder to laugh at now than audiences did at the end of the 1980s.
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Rushmore (1998)
7.6/10on IMDb
Released
Wes Anderson's comedy, co-written with Owen Wilson, is about a 15-year-old scholarship student at a private academy who is flunking his classes while running nearly every club on campus. Jason Schwartzman, in his film debut, makes Max Fischer infuriating and impossible not to root for, and Bill Murray is wonderful as the depressed tycoon who becomes his friend and then his rival for a teacher's affections.
This is the pick for adults who like their comedy dry. Murray won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male, and his quiet midlife despair is a big part of why the film plays better at 35 than it ever could at 15.
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Superbad (2007)
7.6/10on IMDb
Released
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the script as teenagers, and you can tell: the panic, the bravado and the sheer amount of talking are exactly right. Jonah Hill and Michael Cera play best friends trying to get alcohol to a party before they head off to different colleges, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, in his film debut, turns a fake ID reading McLovin into a legend.
Under Greg Mottola's direction, the filth is wrapped around a love story about a friendship ending, which lands harder with adults than it did with teenagers. Not every gross-out joke has aged well, but the final goodbye at the mall still stings.
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Booksmart (2019)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Olivia Wilde's directing debut flips the usual party movie. Two overachieving best friends, played by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, realize on the eve of graduation that they should have worked less and played more, and try to cram four years of fun into one night.
It is fast, warm and genuinely funny about how wrong we are about the classmates we write off, an insight adults appreciate in hindsight. It won Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards, and the friendship at its center feels lived in rather than written. Billie Lourd's chaotic classmate, who keeps turning up wherever the girls go, is the running joke worth the price of admission.
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Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
7.8/10on IMDb
Released
John Hughes's ode to skipping school reads differently to adults, who notice that Ferris's charm is mostly a con and that the real story belongs to his anxious best friend Cameron, played by Alan Ruck. Matthew Broderick talks straight to camera, the day tours the landmarks of Chicago, and Jeffrey Jones's dean of students is a cartoon villain chasing a truant.
It was added to the National Film Registry in 2014, and the parade and the art museum visit are still the high points. Ferris's resentful sister Jeanie, the only person who sees through him, gets funnier with every rewatch.
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Dazed and Confused (1993)
7.6/10on IMDb
Released
Richard Linklater's hangout comedy follows a crowd of Texas teenagers on the last day of school in 1976, from the hazing of incoming freshmen to a keg party in a field. There is barely a plot, which is exactly the point: it remembers how a single night could feel endless and how little anyone was actually in charge.
It was a box office disappointment before becoming a cult favorite, and it is a parade of future stars, with Matthew McConaughey's breakout as the older guy who never quite left high school behind. The paddling scenes are rough to watch, but the film is clear-eyed rather than nostalgic about them.
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Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Cameron Crowe went undercover as a student at a San Diego high school and turned the year into a book, then this script, and that reporting is why the kids feel like real teenagers rather than movie ones. Amy Heckerling's directing debut juggles mall jobs, first sexual experiences and Sean Penn's stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli, whose running battle with history teacher Mr. Hand is pure comedy.
It is franker about sex than most teen comedies, including an abortion storyline handled with more care than its reputation suggests, while some of the camera's leering at Phoebe Cates has aged badly. It entered the National Film Registry in 2005.
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The Breakfast Club (1985)
7.8/10on IMDb
Released
Five students from different cliques spend a Saturday in detention, and John Hughes gets more out of one school library than most films get out of an entire campus. The brain, the athlete, the princess, the basket case and the criminal start as types and end as people, played by Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson.
It is more talk than gags, and some of it has not aged well: in 2018 Ringwald herself wrote about how Bender's harassment of her character is played as romance. For adults the reward is Paul Gleason's assistant principal, who turns out to be as worried about the future as the kids are.
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10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew moved to a Seattle-area high school, with Julia Stiles as the prickly, bookish Kat and Heath Ledger as the bad boy paid to date her so that her younger sister is allowed to date too. The setup is a scheme, but the film is smarter than its premise and gives Kat the last word.
Ledger's serenade of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" in the bleachers is the scene everyone remembers, and Stiles's poem in English class earns its emotion. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the new kid who sets the whole plan in motion, and the sisters' anxious obstetrician father is a gift for parents watching.
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Easy A (2010)
7.0/10on IMDb
Released
Emma Stone became a star as Olive, a student who lets a lie about losing her virginity spread through school and then leans into the reputation, sewing a red A onto her clothes in a nod to The Scarlet Letter. Bert V. Royal's script is quick and literate, Will Gluck keeps it moving, and Stone earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical.
Adults get the best parents on this list, with Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's relaxed, hilarious mom and dad, plus Thomas Haden Church as the teacher who actually likes his students. It is also a sharp little satire of how fast school gossip outruns the truth.
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21 Jump Street (2012)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Two mismatched young cops, played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, go undercover as students and discover the social order has flipped since their day: caring about the environment and taking AP classes is cool now, and the former jock is the outsider. That reversal is the sharpest joke about cliques that anyone who graduated a while ago will recognize.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, in their live-action directing debut, keep the jokes coming about rebooting an old TV series. It is crude and violent and works best as a buddy comedy, but Tatum's comic timing is a revelation, and the 1980s show's fans get a payoff near the end.
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Bring It On (2000)
6.2/10on IMDb
Released
The cheerleading comedy that turned out to be about cultural appropriation before most movies had the vocabulary. Kirsten Dunst's new captain discovers that her San Diego squad's winning routines were stolen from the East Compton Clovers, led by Gabrielle Union's Isis, and has to build something original before nationals.
Peyton Reed's first theatrical feature is bright, quick and endlessly quotable, and Union gives the film its spine. Adults will notice how fairly it treats the Clovers' case, even if the ending lets the richer school feel a little too good about itself.
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Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
7.0/10on IMDb
Released
Made for about $400,000 and filmed at a real high school in Preston, Idaho, Jared Hess's deadpan comedy turned a gloriously awkward misfit into a phenomenon. Jon Heder plays Napoleon, who helps his shy new friend Pedro run for class president while his own family falls apart around him in small, strange ways.
It has few jokes in the usual sense, just long silences, tater tots and an unshakable commitment to its own oddness, so people either find it hilarious or baffling. Adults often like it more than they expect, especially the climactic dance, which Jared and Jerusha Hess wrote because they knew Heder liked to dance.
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Saved! (2004)
6.7/10on IMDb
Released
A satire of a Christian high school near Baltimore that turns out funnier and kinder than its premise suggests. Jena Malone's Mary sets out to save her boyfriend from being gay and ends up pregnant, while Mandy Moore plays the school's queen bee, whose piety is mostly a weapon.
Macaulay Culkin, as Moore's sarcastic brother, and Eva Amurri, as the school's resident rebel, steal their scenes. Brian Dannelly's film mocks hypocrisy rather than faith, which makes it easier to share with a mixed group of adults than its reputation implies, though some viewers will still bristle at the target.
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Juno (2007)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
A 16-year-old in Elk River, Minnesota, discovers she is pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption, and Diablo Cody's Oscar-winning screenplay finds real comedy in that without ever sneering at it. Elliot Page plays Juno as armored in wisecracks, with Michael Cera as the sweetly baffled boy involved.
Jason Reitman's film is a gift for adult viewers because the grown-ups are written as carefully as the kids: J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney as Juno's dad and stepmom are a terrific double act, and Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the would-be adoptive couple turn out more complicated than they first look. The quippy dialogue is very 2007, but the heart holds up.
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The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
Hailee Steinfeld's Nadine is a high schooler whose best friend starts dating her older brother, and Kelly Fremon Craig's directing debut turns that betrayal into the funniest portrait here of a teenager who is her own worst enemy. Steinfeld earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical.
The secret weapon for adult viewers is Woody Harrelson as Mr. Bruner, the teacher who meets Nadine's melodrama with perfect deadpan. Hayden Szeto's awkward admirer Erwin gives the film its sweetest scenes. It leans more toward drama than most picks here, but it is a comedy first.
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Lady Bird (2017)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Greta Gerwig's solo directing debut is set at a Catholic high school in Sacramento in 2002, and it is the most generous film here about how embarrassing being 17 can be. Saoirse Ronan plays a senior who has renamed herself Lady Bird and wants out of her hometown, and Laurie Metcalf is her loving, exhausting mother.
It won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and earned five Oscar nominations. The laughs come from recognition: the school musical, the cool kids who turn out to be less interesting than they seemed, the fights in the car. Adults who once argued with a parent, or are now that parent, will find it lands hardest of all.
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Dope (2015)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Rick Famuyiwa's comedy follows Malcolm, a high school geek in Inglewood, California, who idolizes '90s hip-hop and is set on getting into Harvard, until a chance invitation to an underground party drags him into a far more dangerous adventure. Shameik Moore leads a funny trio of outsiders, and the film plays like a teen comedy crossed with a crime caper.
It is sharpest about how other people decide who a kid like Malcolm is allowed to be, and the college-application payoff lands as both a punchline and an argument. The plot gets busy and the tone swings, but for adults that is part of the energy.
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Bottoms (2023)
6.7/10on IMDb
Released
The most unhinged film on this list. Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri play two unpopular seniors who start a fight club as a way to hook up with cheerleaders, and Emma Seligman's satire pushes every teen-movie cliché until it breaks, from the worship of the football team to the cartoonishly escalating violence.
Sennott co-wrote it, and both leads have the bone-dry timing that adults who know Edebiri from The Bear will recognize. Former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch steals scenes as their checked-out history teacher, Mr. G. It is crude and deliberately ridiculous, which is exactly the appeal.
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Do Revenge (2022)
6.3/10on IMDb
Released
A Netflix comedy loosely inspired by Strangers on a Train, in which Camila Mendes's dethroned queen bee and Maya Hawke's new student agree to take down each other's enemies at an elite private school in Miami. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson directs it like a candy-colored tribute to Clueless and Heathers at once.
It is the pick here that best captures how social media turned school status into a public scoreboard, and its pastel uniforms and venomous banter make it an easy night in. The twists pile up toward the end, so go in ready for melodrama rather than realism.
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