We all survived our teen years. Well, some of us are still in recovery.
Even if you were so confident you smiled with braces on your teeth and let your geekalicious interests be known, chances are you still looked around to see what made other teens popular. There have always been plenty of examples in the movies.
A book coming out next month takes a sarcastic look at those examples. How To Fight, Lie, and Cry Your Way to Popularity (and a Prom Date): Lousy Life Lessons From 50 Teen Movies
Perhaps one of the following inspired you to update your hairstyle or change your approach to romance. Or maybe just fueled your desire to get out of high school.
Roddy’s life lesson:
“To appreciate the nice guy who won’t take advantage of you in your bathrobe, get impregnated by his jerk of a best friend.”
Roddy’s life lesson:
“To jumpstart a better relationship with your dad, let your best friend cost him millions in property damage.”
Roddy’s life lesson:
“To end high school cliques, date a psychopath who kills the cool kids (and then himself), leaving you to rule the school.”
Roddy’s life lesson:
“If you’re forced into a life of killing vampires, at least look hot while doing it.”
Roddy’s life lesson:
“To get into a highly competitive dance academy, get overly emotional before your audition, dance poorly, and then have your boyfriend interrupt in the most unprofessional way imaginable.”
Roddy’s life lesson:
“The best way to take the popular girl down: Be more abusive than she is. Then apologize to the whole school and all will be well.”
Sure, you weren’t a go-along-with-the-crowd person even then but there must have been one movie that made an impression on you. Care to fess up?
pretty in pink (I think it was) inspired me. It must have made an impression in my head somewhere because I may have had to shop at thrift and charity shoppes when I was in high school. But I could make it cool by going vintage and sewing my own touches!
A movie called “Friends” had a soundtrack by Elton John, probably his first. About two young teens who run away to the French countryside and have a baby. I still remember one piece of dialogue: “Do you think our baby will run away from us when she’s 14?” “Well, you don’t want her living with us her whole life, do you?”
I think the inspiration I got from that movie was, “Gee, I’d like to visit France!”
Ack, I’ve never seen Pretty in Pink or Friends. I’m intrigued enough to add Friends to my netflix queue. Have to admit, I was one of those oddballs in school reading Denial of Death by Ernest Becker and watching films about the Holocaust. Drag right? I’m making up for it now, an insomniac driven to late night stand up comedy…
Laura! You need to go back in time and see Pretty in Pink when you were a teenager!! That’s top of my list, too.
Hilarious to see this list because I was just on YouTube looking at Ferris Bueller clips today. Oddly, it was for work.
Hmmm… my first thought when I scrolled down the highlighted list was, “Loved the Buffy series, but didn’t much care for the movie – and I felt physically sick watching HEATHERS.” I saw my share of teen pics… but the movies that really affected me and commanded my imagination weren’t “teen” flicks. I was obsessed with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and its sequels, the STAR TREK movies, the STAR WARS movies, and pretty much anything Disney and animated.
I guess if I had to pick a non-SFF movie, I’d have to say DIRTY DANCING. Why? Jennifer Grey’s nose. She played a character who wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, was clumsy, who even tripped over her words – “I carried a watermelon…” – and she still got the guy.
I also liked THE BREAKFAST CLUB, more in the sense that it reminded me of my remedial chemistry and math classes, where I sat in back with the stoners because they seemed to like me (despite the fact that I didn’t party, never touched drugs, didn’t like their music, and looked like a prep), and the preppy girls in front didn’t. My proudest moment – when the guys cheered for me because I actually said “Yo” to the teacher. Lesson learned from TBC? Friendship is built on shared experiences and common adversaries rather than social cliques.
Oh the horror, Amy, to think of going back in time to one’s teen years!
Chris, what you saw in Jennifer Gray is what I love about foreign films. The actors look like real people, not photoshopped mannequins.
Hands down the movie that influenced me the most while growing up in general was “Goonies.” It’s a movie I fell in love with when I was a child and still love to this day. What it taught me? No matter how strange your friends are, you should stick together.
Next up would be “The Breakfast Club” which showed me…no matter how big the social gap between people, there’s the option of a relationship.
“Weird Science” could probably be put on the list as well. What that taught me? If you let your imagination soar you never know what you can make a reality. 🙂