Five Really Great Teen Movies
Movies are a great escape and they are a great opportunity to learn, initiate dialogue on a scary topic and laugh. Laugh a lot. Through your tears and laughter you can find new ways to connect with your teen and this is never a bad thing. Here are five really great teen movies you should check out:
1. Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Christian Slater plays a city kid, Mark whose family moves to the suburbs. Mark is a shy and attempts to be invisible at school while being heard at night as an independent radio DJ named Hard Harry or “Happy Harry Hardon.” He challenges authority, questions cliques and parental expectations and uses the radio waves as a way to exhort the feelings of his classmates as well as himself. This is a great teen film that provides insight into the challenges of being a teen.
2. Breakfast Club (1985)
This is one of the best teen ensembles ever gathered. They create a mix of teen stereotypes in order to hear the voices of teens in an average school in the backdrop of detention. The film is dialogue heavy and the teens speak from their mind and their hearts and you are taken on an emotional ride of their heartbreak and desires for a more harmonious high school experience. They enter individuals and leave friends in a quest to make high school a more enjoyable experience for all of them.
3. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Mathew Broderick as Ferris, the quintessential cool guy in school entertains a day off from school in which the day is too beautiful to be trapped in school. He recruits his sweetheart and best friend on this day of mischief around Chicago daring them to take risks that seem to have no consequences. It’s a great fantasy about what a day off from school could be like instead of what it often is, sitting around not doing anything hoping you don’t get busted.
4. Juno (2008)
This movie is a fresh look at the discussion about teen pregnancy. The movie’s shero is Juno a witty and smart teen whose response to her Dad’s “I didn’t know you were that kind of girl” responds, “I don’t really know what kind of girl I am.” She decides to have her baby adopted and you see her face challenges like choosing the adopting parents, being in school pregnant and the community pregnant and running into the father of the baby at school. You witness her relationship with her Dad, a close one. The relationship demonstrates how important the support and love of a parent in such a stressful time adds to the confidence and resilience of teens. The best line of the movie is after the delivery of the baby and both Dad and teen are crying and he says to her, “Next time it will be on your own terms.”
5. American Pie (1999)
If you have ever wondered how teens view their virginity, you might want to watch these five guys attempt to rid themselves of theirs. The goal is to shed their virginity by year’s end. It isn’t just about the potty mouth sex talk, it’s about the conclusion they come to about what sex means and how they want to go about it or not in the end. This is a great movie to laugh about teen sexuality and hopefully discuss the topic with your teen in a less tense environment.
This is a short list to say the least, but if you have any teen movies you remember please let me know in the comments section.
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