5. 10 Things I Hate About You
This reworking of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew has lines to match anything the Bard ever came up with. Case in point: good girl Bianca’s musings on the difference between like and love. “Well, I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack.”
4. Heathers
An 80’s Mean Girls with a big dose of psychotic violence. Tiring of her fellow ‘popular girls’ the Heathers (all the best girl gangs have a name), Winona Ryder’s Veronica decides to eliminate them, casually murdering a few others along the way with the help of Christian Slater. A dark antidote to teenage fluff.
3. Dazed & Confused
Tarantino called this one of the greatest films of all time. On the last day of school, 1976, jocks, nerds, stoners and beautiful girls terrorize younger kids, attempt to buy beer, make out, get high, drive around and contemplate the future. Funny, relaxed, and totally wonderful.
2. Cry-Baby
Everything that made Grease weird (30-year-old actors playing teenagers; a terrible moral message) feels right at home in John Waters’ dazzling high school, musical satire. The characters are brilliantly grotesque, the doo-wop and rockabilly soundtrack flawless, but Johnny Depp steals the show as a juvenile delinquent in 1950s Maryland. A cult classic.
1. Mean Girls
“That’s why her hair’s so big. It’s full of secrets.” With an endlessly quotable script, the iconic Plastics and a classic teen-movie message (being popular isn’t everything!), this is high school gold and a sad reminder of what a great actress LiLo was, pre-raging coke addiction and tragic transformation into Donatella Versace.
