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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.

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