A-List: Back to School Movies
By J. Don Birnam
September 22, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The criteria is of course fuzzy - a lot of movies feature school or trapezes through their. But let’s talk about movies where school is a central theme, a crucial anxiety, and not just a peripheral jaunt. A movie like Back to the Future is not really about school. A movie like Legally Blonde is, if that makes sense. There really is a lot to work with, even though the theme overlaps a bit with teenage comedies.
We’ve been here before, by the way. When we covered female-driven comedies, somehow we ended up with a list that included a lot of school-themed movies, from Clueless to Mean Girls. We’ve also covered Harry Potter movies themselves, as well as named them the best movie franchises ever, and we’ve even given a shout-out to the quintessential school movie Election in our column about election-themed films. I’ve made it harder on myself by removing those movies from contention, though of course all would be in the top five if eligible. I’m going so far as taking out Dead Poet’s Society, simply because we covered it during our tribute to Robin Williams.
But, don’t worry, there is plenty left in the tank.
5. Back to School (1986)
You didn’t think we’d run the list without the one movie that actually carries the relevant title, did you? In this somewhat wacky comedy, Rodney Dangerfield goes to college when his academically-challenged son shows signs of not doing well in school.
Dangerfield’s character, Thornton Melon, is not the brightest bulb in the shed himself, but he has enough money to buy himself admission into school, to name a building, and to get some passing grades. The comedic journey has him discovering that money doesn’t buy happiness - but neither does education.
Melon is in some way the exultation of the values behind someone, like, say, George W. Bush - populism in failing at school by the main character. It’s okay to get a C in history; you can still be successful, is the point. But it’s done lightheartedly and with Dangerfield’s signature expressions that are chuckle inducing if nothing else.
Along the way, you encounter Robert Downey Jr. in one of his earliest roles. He play’s Dangerfield’s kid’s only friend in school, and is almost unrecognizable face wise but familiar when it comes to comedic timing.
The 1980s, as we shall see, were perhaps the heyday of the school-themed movie.
4. Bring it On (2000)
Well, except when you consider one of the best modern school-themed movies of today, the Kirsten Dunst cheerleading film, Bring it On. Two parts musical, one part time angst story, and one part romantic comedy, the movie tells the story of the captain of her high school cheerleading squad as she is forced to cope with the discovery that the previous captain had been stealing their routines from another high school.
Dunst, with the help of her best friend (Eliza Dushku) has to race against the clock to find new moves in time for the National championships against the hated Clovers. The film is notable for its black vs. white sassy gags, perhaps too un-P.C. to be made today, and for mercilessly exploiting mostly benign stereotypes about teenagers from all races.
It also has a big heart, with Dunst being down to earth despite her privilege and trying to use her family money to foster a spirit of gamesmanship to help her rivals in their time of need. Even better, though, is that the opposing team, led by Gabrielle Union, ends up not needing her. Everyone is able to fend for themselves in that way, and that is actually refreshing for a movie from the year 2000.
It spanned a multitude of sequels, a live musical, and several somewhat obscure but cultish pop culture references. And it did more than that, because movies like Pitch Perfect are obviously derivative of this, the mother of high school competition movies.
3. The Breakfast Club (1985)
It’s an embarrassment of riches when this coming of age dramedy is merely third on the list. But you know the Brat Pack - Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson - and you know their iconic director, John Hughes.
In this teenage anxiety film, the titular five students are asked to report for detention on Saturday morning in high school. They are each “doing time” for different crimes, and could not (at least superficially) be more different from each other. Jocks, nerds, basket cases, rich girls, and actual criminals, the entire point is touching in its sincerity if clichéd in retrospect: no matter how different they seem from each other, they share more in common than they realize.
The Breakfast Club is a highly implausible movie in one sense: the idea that the vastly different people who form the eclectic group could come together seems almost a pipe dream in today’s world of divided government, and certainly impossible for entrenched teenagers. But that is the brilliance of most John Hughes movies - this concept that we all share some special humanity that binds us despite our differences.
Looking back at the movie with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, hardly a thing seems original about it. The bonds that form, the stereotypes that are shattered. And yet this is obviously because of the deep cultural impact of the film and how it’s affected basically every conception of the high school years in pop culture. Everything from Mean Girls to most of the other movies mentioned today are clear derivatives of The Breakfast Club.
And it’s a pretty funny movie, too.
2. Animal House (1978)
This was a close one folks. Animal House is considered by some the best comedy of all-time, period.
And if you thought that Back to School exulted the party days of college, well… The story, again, should be familiar to you. The Delta Tau Chi fraternity is an outcast at Faber College - Dean Wormer dislikes them because of their rambunctious irreverent behavior and is trying to shut them down. On the other side of the ledger are the snotty Omega Theta Pis, the standard of good frat-like behavior.
Delta Tau is, of course, famously represented by Bluto Blutarsky, played with exquisite comedic brilliance by John Belushi. They party too hard, study too little, and have lots of sex. The movie is certainly helped by that fact alone - college kids are still presented as sexual in the 1970s, something that was inexplicably eradicated from these types of movies as time went on.
In any case, the plot of the film isn’t overly complex. It’s one gag after the next, with a famous toga party, some escapades into motels and strip joints, and many a prank to liven up the day. And if you’ve even been to a baseball game in America with your team down in the bottom of the ninth, you know the rallying cry about Pearl Harbor and the Germans that Bluto uses to round up the troops.
The point of the movie, though, is revealed in the end credits - the messy partiers were successful, whereas the stuck up Omegas didn’t do so well. And the movie gave us the careers of many from Kevin Bacon (a nerdy Omega, believe it or not), and has other iconic actors from Donald Sutherland (already a grown up then!) and Bruce McGill.
Yeah, gender stereotypes leave a lot to be desired - this is a movie about boys being boys without apology. But the exaggerated jokes rarely cross into the crass - not something you can really say of modern school comedies - while always delivering on the right note.
If it weren’t for a movie that was closer to my own childhood, this would be the inarguable number one…
1. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
There’s that name again (John Hughes) and that decade again (the 1980s).
We are back in high school this time, and Ferris, another privileged teenager, really feels like playing hooky. Through a series of ingenious plans, and a whole lot of good luck, Ferris manages to evade and escape the chase by Principal Rooney, determined to catch Ferris in his despondency.
Matthew Broderick, of course, is the infamous title character - the most iconic role of his career. He regularly speaks to the audience, capitalizing on his boyish good looks to charm and entertain you. Alan Ruck is his sidekick, the one with the gloomy and dark outlook on life. Ferris is the opposite - he is chill and relaxed, and he’s worried only about having a good time with his friends before he graduates high school and loses all that forever.
In between, close calls and unexpected twists keep you completely enthralled and entertained. You simply can’t help but feel forlorn for those bygone days of youthful, easy innocence. Oh, and this movie simply could not have been made today, where technology would have doomed Ferris almost from inception.
That’s the silent melancholy of all of these school movies. Yeah, it may feel like a drag once the year begins, but eventually those school years give way to a different type of challenge, with the clock ticking a lot faster.
Remember - life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around you once in a while, you could miss it.