(Guest post by Nadia Jones)
All the cap and gowns and yearbooks floating around can only mean one thing: it’s graduation season.
No matter if you’re a recent high school grad and want to get a dramatic taste of what awaits you or just want to relive your glory days of teenage angst, check out this list of top 5 high school graduation-themed movies and see if your favorite made the cut.
5. “Boyz N The Hood” (1991): Featuring Angela Bassett, Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut and Cuba Gooding Jr. “Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood.” Set in a Los Angeles “ghetto,” this coming-of-age film follows a group of students as they try to survive both senior year and the daily violence that surrounds them.
4. “Can’t Hardly Wait” (1998): Featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ethan Embry, Seth Green, Melissa Joan Hart. “Nobody drink the beer, the beer has gone bad!” This hilariously funny film follows an ensemble of stereotype high school characters—prom queens, cheerleaders, nerds, punk rockers, stoners and other misfits—as they unleash four years worth of unresolved feelings and secret agendas at a wild graduation party. While it’s a bit of a cliché—the sort of nerdy/nice guy proclaims his love to the popular girl, the high school super geek gets revenge on the bully jock, and the wannabe tries to lose his virginity, this film still will leave you stitches.
3. “American Graffiti” (1973): Featuring Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard. “Pardon me, sir, but I lost my I.D. in… in a flood and I’d like to get some Old Harper, hard stuff. Would you mind buying a bottle for me?” This George Lucas eve-of-adulthood film follows a group of high school graduates as they experience one unforgettable summer night filled with everything the early 60s has to offer — girls, rock and roll and fast cars. The “American Graffiti” Blu-ray Special Edition hits shelves May 31.
2. “Say Anything” (1989): Featuring John Cusack, Ione Skye, and John Mahoney. “Dude, I don’t even feel that way about my car, man.” This teen romantic ’80s classic focuses on a beautiful valedictorian who falls in love with the school slacker the summer before she starts college in England. Of course there are forces, particularly her family, who don’t want the duo to be together. Oh yeah—and there may be a “little” scene with a boom box you may recognize.
1. “Grease” (1978): Featuring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. “Why, this car is Auto-matic. It’s System-matic. It’s Hyyyyydro-matic. Why, its Greased Lightning!” Known to some as the original (and much edgier) high school musical, this film (which is based in the 1950s), follows the rebellious T-Birds and Pink Ladies and as they finish their senior year
in high school. There’s dancing and singing, drag races, and an iconic graduation carnival at the end. It’s the perfect movie to get you in the mood for graduation season and may even inspire you to take some dancing lessons.
Honorable mentions: “Adventureland,” “American Pie,” “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” “Carrie,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Prom Night,” “She’s All That,” “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” “Superbad” and “The Hot Chick.” Which one did we miss?
Nadia Jones blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5@gmail.com
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice seeing Lloyd, Lloyd, all null and void on the list (how couldn’t it be here?), and any movie named after a Replacements song can’t be anything but worthy, too. Great list, WWW!!!
I could quote Say Anything all day.
My fave memory from that movie – was working at a video store and a customer approached me and asked, ‘do you have that movie … Joe lies … Joe lies when he cries’
And I knew what she meant!
I am still feeling kind of ripped off that I never attended a graduation carnival. A truly unique Hollywood creation.
Those top 3 are great choices and just seeing what you wrote makes me want to watch all of them again.
I didn’t see Porkys listed.
It is with some pride that I say I have never seen any of these, except Bill & Ted, which I wouldn’t classify as a high school graduation movie (I didn’t even think they were seniors—but it’s the second best time travel movie of all time, after Back to the Future).
Then again, I hate all high school movies, for being completely different from what high school was really like, and not in a good way—most specifically the “nerds vs. jocks” things is a Marxist class-war dynamic, and I never like those in fiction.