High school movies generally exaggerate high school issues in order to send powerful messages about how students should be well-rounded and unaffected by others’ opinions. While this is great advice, the teenage years can be extremely challenging to those who are still struggling to find their place. Some movie creators have realized that these students need to know there is really more to life than getting everyone to like you and scoring well on certain exams.

The oldest movie, still referenced today and often regarded as the number one classic high school film, is The Breakfast Club (1985). This movie portrays stereotypical students, such as the jock, the princess, the druggy, the nerd and the freak. This balance, along with the annoying, stickler teacher, is what some kids expect high school to have. The beauty of this film is that the fine lines are broken and everyone finds out that they are not as different as they had thought. This is the ideal message to students trying to determine their identity. It says that everyone has their similarities and their differences, but in the end, we all experience similar situations in high school and we really are not that different from one another. However, it sets in stone the lines between the jock, the princess, the nerd, the druggy and the freak that should not exist to begin with.

Mean Girls (2004) takes these distinctions to the next level by viewing them through the eyes of a student rather than a spectator. Very much exaggerated, these “queen bees” act as if they own the school. Newcomer Cady (Lindsay Lohan) represents a naive student who is at first disgusted and later engrossed in the system. This movie sends the message that students are animals in the real world and can often forget what tolerance is about when faced with issues of popularity and greed. It also claims that there are teenagers who will stop at nothing to push themselves ahead in the hierarchy of students, and will often wear saccharine disguises.

Thirteen (2003) focuses on the idea of peer pressure in a more dangerous account of youth behavior. It portrays a young girl’s high school experience and her vulnerability and lack of self-control. Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) starts out as an innocent freshman, but out of curiosity, or perhaps in a desire for attention, decides to befriend the popular Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed). Tracy enters the world of drugs, alcohol and rebellion. She walks over everyone, including her family and former friends, and never stops to think about the consequences until it is too late. This dark movie holds a very compelling message of responsibility and the risk of taking naive pursuits too far. Teenagers can have a lot of freedom, but some of the consequences of their actions are hardly worth the gains.

Two other movies about the necessity of freedom and the same conflicting pressure, are Perfect Score (2004) and Accepted (2006). They focus on students who want to succeed in the larger world so much that they attempt to cheat their way through the SATs and into college. These students end up taking their plans incredibly far in both cases. Though they manage to fool many people, they end up giving up their cheated gains and becoming honest. In each story, the message is clear: the system may appear tough and demoralizing, but in reality, it points students in the direction of futures that are appropriate to their temperaments. Whether or not one gets into their first-choice college, the future is indefinite and can be decided with a strong positive attitude. Teenagers often fear that the future is set in stone, but everything is subject to change and you can make that change happen when the time is right, so there is no need to fear the unknown.

There are many other high school movies that joke about everything from the ridiculous immaturity of some high school students to the naive beliefs of others. In any case, we will all grow up and find our place in the real world eventually, and these movies show comforting accounts that while high school may seem overwhelming, it is nothing like the real world. The sweeping moral in every high school movie is to not cave in to peer pressure or give up hope in yourself, but that everyone will succeed in his own way in the end, no matter how radical his methods may be.