100 best high-school movies.
by ol_chezz | created - 05 Aug 2021 | updated - 9 months ago | PublicAll Movie About tenneger and growing up
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1. The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
R | 104 min | Comedy, Drama
High-school life gets even more unbearable for Nadine when her best friend, Krista, starts dating her older brother.
Director: Kelly Fremon Craig | Stars: Hailee Steinfeld, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner, Kyra Sedgwick
Votes: 140,261 | Gross: $14.43M
2. Lady Bird (2017)
R | 94 min | Comedy, Drama
In 2002, an artistically inclined 17-year-old girl comes of age in Sacramento, California.
Director: Greta Gerwig | Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges
Votes: 329,367 | Gross: $48.96M
3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
PG-13 | 103 min | Drama
Charlie, a 15-year-old introvert, enters high school and is nervous about his new life. When he befriends his seniors, he learns to cope with his friend's suicide and his tumultuous past.
Director: Stephen Chbosky | Stars: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Paul Rudd
Votes: 548,253 | Gross: $17.74M
4. Sing Street (2016)
PG-13 | 106 min | Comedy, Drama, Music
A young lad notices a beautiful girl who begins to occupy his thoughts. While struggling with poverty, personal relationships and life's woes, he starts a band, hoping to catch her attention.
Director: John Carney | Stars: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Aidan Gillen, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Jack Reynor
Votes: 100,983 | Gross: $3.24M
5. Charlie Bartlett (2007)
R | 97 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A rich kid becomes the self-appointed psychiatrist to the student body of his new high school.
Director: Jon Poll | Stars: Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey Jr., Hope Davis, Kat Dennings
Votes: 66,712 | Gross: $3.95M
6. The Spectacular Now (2013)
R | 95 min | Drama, Romance
A hard-partying high school senior's philosophy on life changes when he meets the not-so-typical "nice girl."
Director: James Ponsoldt | Stars: Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Votes: 161,420 | Gross: $6.85M
7. Easy A (2010)
PG-13 | 92 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
When Olive lies to her best friend about losing her virginity to one of the college boys, a girl overhears their conversation. Soon, her story spreads across the entire school like wildfire.
Director: Will Gluck | Stars: Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes, Penn Badgley, Dan Byrd
Votes: 418,209 | Gross: $58.40M
8. The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
PG-13 | 126 min | Drama, Romance
Hazel and Gus are teenagers who meet at a cancer support group and fall in love. They both share the same acerbic wit and a love of books, especially "An Imperial Affliction", so they embark on a journey to visit an author in Amsterdam.
Director: Josh Boone | Stars: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern
Votes: 401,274 | Gross: $124.87M
9. 17 Again (2009)
PG-13 | 102 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Mike O'Donnell is ungrateful for how his life turned out. He gets a chance to rewrite his life when he tried to save a janitor near a bridge and jumped after him into a time vortex.
Director: Burr Steers | Stars: Zac Efron, Matthew Perry, Leslie Mann, Thomas Lennon
Votes: 216,470 | Gross: $64.17M
10. Flirting (1991)
R | 99 min | Drama, Romance
Two freethinking teenagers - a boy and a girl - confront with authoritarian teachers in their boarding schools. The other students treat this differently.
Director: John Duigan | Stars: Noah Taylor, Thandiwe Newton, Nicole Kidman, Bartholomew Rose
Votes: 6,414 | Gross: $2.42M
11. Just One of the Guys (1985)
PG-13 | 100 min | Comedy, Romance
Terry feels discriminated against when the summer jobs at the Sun Tribune go to two guys. She decides to do something about it. She dresses like a guy and gets a haircut. Will students at the other high school notice? Girls notice "him".
Director: Lisa Gottlieb | Stars: Joyce Hyser, Clayton Rohner, Billy Jayne, Toni Hudson
Votes: 17,878 | Gross: $11.50M
12. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
PG-13 | 97 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A high-school boy, Cameron, cannot date Bianca until her anti-social older sister, Kat, has a boyfriend. So, Cameron pays a mysterious boy, Patrick, to charm Kat.
Director: Gil Junger | Stars: Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik
Votes: 385,618 | Gross: $38.18M
13. Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Not Rated | 124 min | Drama, Romance
The love of high school sweethearts Deanie and Bud is weighed down by the oppressive expectations of their parents and society in smalltown Kansas in 1928, threatening the future of their relationship.
Director: Elia Kazan | Stars: Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie
Votes: 22,651 | Gross: $8.72M
14. My Bodyguard (1980)
PG | 102 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
When a boy comes to a new school and gets harassed by a bully, he acquires the services of the school's most feared kid as a bodyguard.
Director: Tony Bill | Stars: Chris Makepeace, Adam Baldwin, Matt Dillon, Paul Quandt
Votes: 10,849 | Gross: $22.48M
15. Can't Hardly Wait (1998)
PG-13 | 100 min | Comedy, Romance
A complete graduating class, consisting of beautiful girls, geeks and promising footballers, assemble at a rich classmate's residence for a party. Interesting developments follow at the get-together.
Directors: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan | Stars: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ethan Embry, Charlie Korsmo, Lauren Ambrose
Votes: 53,995 | Gross: $25.34M
16. Stand and Deliver (1988)
PG | 103 min | Biography, Drama
The story of Jaime Escalante, a high school teacher who successfully inspired his dropout-prone students to learn calculus.
Director: Ramón Menéndez | Stars: Edward James Olmos, Estelle Harris, Mark Phelan, Virginia Paris
Votes: 22,351 | Gross: $13.99M
17. Fame (1980)
R | 134 min | Drama, Music, Musical
A chronicle of the lives of several teenagers who attend a New York high school for students gifted in the performing arts.
Director: Alan Parker | Stars: Eddie Barth, Irene Cara, Lee Curreri, Laura Dean
Votes: 24,711 | Gross: $0.12M
18. Can't Buy Me Love (1987)
PG-13 | 94 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
An outcast secretly pays the most popular girl in school one thousand dollars to pretend to be his girlfriend for a month.
Director: Steve Rash | Stars: Patrick Dempsey, Amanda Peterson, Courtney Gains, Tina Caspary
Votes: 42,033 | Gross: $31.62M
19. The Karate Kid (1984)
PG | 126 min | Action, Drama, Family
A martial arts master agrees to teach karate to a bullied teenager.
Director: John G. Avildsen | Stars: Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, Elisabeth Shue, Martin Kove
Votes: 244,604 | Gross: $90.82M
20. The Virgin Suicides (1999)
R | 97 min | Drama, Romance
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents in suburban Detroit in the mid 1970s.
Director: Sofia Coppola | Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, James Woods, Kathleen Turner
Votes: 169,303 | Gross: $4.86M
21. Bye Bye Birdie (1963)
Approved | 112 min | Comedy, Musical
A rock singer travels to a small Ohio town to make his "farewell" television performance and kiss his biggest fan before he is drafted.
Director: George Sidney | Stars: Dick Van Dyke, Ann-Margret, Janet Leigh, Maureen Stapleton
Votes: 9,334 | Gross: $13.13M
22. Friday Night Lights (2004)
PG-13 | 118 min | Action, Drama, Sport
Based on H.G. Bissinger's book, which profiled the economically depressed town of Odessa, Texas and their heroic high school football team, The Permian High Panthers.
Director: Peter Berg | Stars: Billy Bob Thornton, Jay Hernandez, Derek Luke, Lucas Black
Votes: 66,869 | Gross: $61.26M
23. Brick (2005)
R | 110 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend.
Director: Rian Johnson | Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Emilie de Ravin, Meagan Good
Votes: 110,069 | Gross: $2.06M
24. Get Real (1998)
R | 108 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A tenderly romantic coming-of-age story as two boys in a British school fall in love.
Director: Simon Shore | Stars: Ben Silverstone, Brad Gorton, Charlotte Brittain, Stacy Hart
Votes: 14,680 | Gross: $1.20M
25. Hoop Dreams (1994)
PG-13 | 170 min | Documentary, Drama, Sport
A film following the lives of two inner-city Chicago boys who struggle to become college basketball players on the road to going professional.
Director: Steve James | Stars: William Gates, Arthur Agee, Emma Gates, Curtis Gates
Votes: 28,023 | Gross: $7.83M
26. Risky Business (1983)
R | 99 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A Chicago teenager is looking for fun at home while his parents are away, but the situation quickly gets out of hand.
Director: Paul Brickman | Stars: Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Joe Pantoliano, Richard Masur
Votes: 99,897 | Gross: $63.50M
27. Bring It On (2000)
PG-13 | 98 min | Comedy, Romance, Sport
A champion high school cheerleading squad discovers its previous captain stole all their best routines from an inner-city school and must scramble to compete at this year's championships.
Director: Peyton Reed | Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, Gabrielle Union
Votes: 105,819 | Gross: $68.38M
28. Gregory's Girl (1980)
PG | 91 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Gregory is a normal teen who is infatuated with a classmate. He must work to win her affection.
Director: Bill Forsyth | Stars: John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Jake D'Arcy, Clare Grogan
Votes: 9,453
29. Back to the Future (1985)
PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
Votes: 1,307,590 | Gross: $210.61M
30. To Sir, with Love (1967)
Approved | 105 min | Drama
Idealistic engineer-trainee and his experiences in teaching a group of rambunctious white high school students from the slums of London's East End.
Director: James Clavell | Stars: Sidney Poitier, Judy Geeson, Christian Roberts, Suzy Kendall
Votes: 20,435 | Gross: $42.43M
31. Pretty in Pink (1986)
PG-13 | 97 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A poor girl must choose between the affections of dating her childhood sweetheart or a rich but sensitive playboy.
Director: Howard Deutch | Stars: Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Harry Dean Stanton, Annie Potts
Votes: 88,625 | Gross: $40.47M
32. Hoosiers (1986)
PG | 114 min | Drama, Sport
A coach with a checkered past and a local drunk train a small-town high school basketball team to become a top contender for the state championship in 1950s Indiana.
Director: David Anspaugh | Stars: Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, Dennis Hopper, Sheb Wooley
Votes: 51,094 | Gross: $28.61M
33. American Pie (1999)
R | 95 min | Comedy
Four teenage boys enter a pact to lose their virginity by prom night.
Directors: Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz | Stars: Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Jennifer Coolidge
Votes: 433,978 | Gross: $102.56M
34. Grease (1978)
PG | 110 min | Comedy, Musical, Romance
Good girl Sandy Olsson and greaser Danny Zuko fell in love over the summer. When they unexpectedly discover they're now in the same high school, will they be able to rekindle their romance?
Director: Randal Kleiser | Stars: John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway
Votes: 300,725 | Gross: $188.76M
35. Dead Poets Society (1989)
PG | 128 min | Comedy, Drama
Maverick teacher John Keating returns in 1959 to the prestigious New England boys' boarding school where he was once a star student, using poetry to embolden his pupils to new heights of self-expression.
Director: Peter Weir | Stars: Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles
Votes: 546,572 | Gross: $95.86M
36. The Last Picture Show (1971)
R | 118 min | Drama, Romance
In 1951, a group of high schoolers come of age in a bleak, isolated, atrophied North Texas town that is slowly dying, both culturally and economically.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich | Stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson
Votes: 52,411 | Gross: $29.13M
37. Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
PG-13 | 103 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Peggy Sue faints at a high school reunion. When she wakes up, she finds herself in her own past, just before she finished school.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Kathleen Turner, Nicolas Cage, Barry Miller, Catherine Hicks
Votes: 40,835 | Gross: $41.38M
38. Lucas (1986)
PG-13 | 100 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A socially inept fourteen-year-old experiences heartbreak for the first time when his two best friends - Cappie, an older-brother figure, and Maggie, the new girl with whom he is in love - fall for each other.
Director: David Seltzer | Stars: Corey Haim, Kerri Green, Charlie Sheen, Courtney Thorne-Smith
Votes: 17,538 | Gross: $8.20M
39. High School (1968)
Not Rated | 75 min | Documentary
Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside Northeast High School as a fly on the wall to observe the teachers and how they interact with the students.
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Votes: 2,239
40. Mean Girls (2004)
PG-13 | 97 min | Comedy
Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.
Director: Mark Waters | Stars: Lindsay Lohan, Jonathan Bennett, Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey
Votes: 435,469 | Gross: $86.06M
41. Say Anything (1989)
PG-13 | 100 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A noble underachiever and a beautiful valedictorian fall in love the summer before she goes off to college.
Director: Cameron Crowe | Stars: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor
Votes: 95,973 | Gross: $20.78M
42. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
PG-13 | 103 min | Comedy
A popular high school student, admired by his peers, decides to take a day off from school and goes to extreme lengths to pull it off, to the chagrin of his Dean, who'll do anything to stop him.
Director: John Hughes | Stars: Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jeffrey Jones
Votes: 386,673 | Gross: $70.14M
43. Election (1999)
R | 103 min | Comedy, Romance
A high school teacher meets his match in an over-achieving student politician.
Director: Alexander Payne | Stars: Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Loren Nelson, Chris Klein
Votes: 104,575 | Gross: $14.88M
44. Sixteen Candles (1984)
PG | 93 min | Comedy, Romance
A girl's "sweet" sixteenth birthday is anything but special: her family forgets about it, and she suffers from every embarrassment possible.
Director: John Hughes | Stars: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Justin Henry, Michael Schoeffling
Votes: 126,436 | Gross: $23.69M
45. Clueless (1995)
PG-13 | 97 min | Comedy, Romance
Shallow, rich and socially successful Cher is at the top of her Beverly Hills high school's pecking scale. Seeing herself as a matchmaker, Cher first coaxes two teachers into dating each other.
Director: Amy Heckerling | Stars: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd
Votes: 246,076 | Gross: $56.63M
46. Dazed and Confused (1993)
R | 103 min | Comedy
The adventures of high school and junior high students on the last day of school in May 1976.
Director: Richard Linklater | Stars: Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Matthew McConaughey, Rory Cochrane
Votes: 199,728 | Gross: $7.99M
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