Because No One Asked: Ranking the 80s teen movies I’ve seen, with little to no explanation whatsoever.

As a child of the mid-80s, I grew up watching the TBS edit of many 1980s movies, and wondering why the pretty white people from upper middle class families in those movies had so many problems not related to their family’s socio-economic status.  Looking back, many of the plots are a weird sort of logic house of cards, in that we need to believe that the cliques existed in high school, and that becoming popular was the most important part of life, and would fix everything once the whole school recognized their value.  As is the case with all my lists, I’ll group them into an overarching and overly simplified collection of movies and provide almost no rationale.  It’s like I’m a surly, passive aggressive person with highly anal-retentive needs to provide order and structure to speciously connected things. Remember, these are only the movies I’ve seen.  You won’t find Risky Business or Fame on here. Let’s go!

Disqualified: Not Really Teen Movies/Not Really in the 80s

The Outsiders

The Outsiders is kind of a teen movie, but it’s much deeper than just malls and relationships.  It’s a great movie, and kick-started the careers of plenty of people, including Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, and Rob Lowe.  This is, today, a murderer’s row cast.  Alas, the movie is set in the 1960s, so it is disqualified.

Back to the Future

I know!  When you think of the 80s, you think of Back to the Future, parts I, II, and to a lesser extent, III!  What the hell is wrong with me?  Well, Back to the Future I takes place largely in the 1950s, Back to the Future Part II takes place largely in the 2010s, and Back to the Future III takes place largely in the old West.  This is like saying that Elisabeth Shue is a lead Actor in Back to the Future, Part II.  She is left in an alley in 2015 while Marty and Doc Brown race around saving the future. Believe me, Back to the Future would be near the top of this list otherwise.

Red Dawn

Red Dawn is a great movie, if a little long, but thoroughly enjoyable.  It’s also not really a teen movie.  It’s far more grown up, what with all the murder and war.  We’re talking malls and detention for 80s teen movies.

Stand By Me

Stand By Me is one of the best movies of the 1980s.  It’s set in the 1950s, though, and the kids are much more adolescent than they are teens.  Still, it’s one of the more mature coming-of-age movies out there.  It’s very true to the source material, too: Stephen King’s “The Body” in his Four Seasons novella collection, which also contains two other stories adapted to the silver screen: “Apt Pupil” which became the movie of the same name, and “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” which became Howard the Duck.  Kidding.

Terrible

Porky's

Have you ever seen Porky’s?  It’s like someone took the dumbest parts of Animal House, made it sleazier, and tied it together with slapsticky dick jokes and toilet humor.  It’s like a Johnny Knoxville movie, but in the 80s.  Note: I realize that Porky’s is set in the 50s.  I don’t care.  I want to make sure people understand how goddamned awful this movie is.

Forgettable

Some Kind of Wonderful

Before I looked up this movie poster, all I could remember is that Eric Stoltz and Lea Thompson were in it, that Eric Stoltz air guitars in the shower at one point, and Mary Stuart Masterson plays a tough girl.  I don’t remember if Stoltz ends up with Lea Thompson, who is the rich girl, or if he picks Mary Stuart Masterson (I always confuse her with Mary-Elizabeth Mastroantonio, because, fuck, they are three-named Marys with MM initials,) but I do remember that when Stoltz takes Lea Thompson out on a date to a really nice restaurant, it’s highly contentious between them until the waiter opens the silver domed tray in front of her to reveal a burger and fries.  I never understood the idea of openly offending your date.  It’s also one of those movies where the title doesn’t really have anything to do with the movie, but rather they wanted to tie in the song.

Decent if unmemorable

Sixteen Candles

“I can’t believe it!  They forgot my fucking birthday!”  That, the Donger, and the panty viewing are the only parts of this movie I remember.  Something about a prom, and it’s Molly Ringwald being overshadowed in her own family.  I liked it, I just don’t remember it.

Dirty Dancing

This movie is unmemorable.  The Song “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” is infinitely memorable.  The dance sequence at the end, and “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner” are memorable, but the main focus of this movie is a really disgusting socioeconomic divide, in which the rich people make Marie Antoinette blush with their lack of empathy, and, oh, right, money for a coat hanger abortion that goes wrong.

Better than Most

Karate Kid
This is a really fun movie, but the problem is that the implausibility factor is extremely high.  Daniel-San was getting his ass kicked on a regular basis, and instead of filing assault charges against the members of Cobra-Kai, he decides to paint a house, sand a deck, and wax cars to learn Karate?  There is, also, a big goofy end-of-movie suspension of disbelief of the magic warm hands massage on Daniel-San’s swept leg.  I love this movie, but it’s not one of the best.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

This movie is probably more genre-defining than I give it credit for, but I saw it much later than others, so it feels like it followed the tropes I’d already seen.  This is like how I experienced Annie Hall.  I saw “High Fidelity” first, and then I saw Annie Hall.  The things which were groundbreaking in Annie Hall, such as talking directly to the camera, having meta discussions, and the like were unspectacular in the wake of a movie like High Fidelity, which takes many of its cues from Annie Hall, only I saw them out of order.  Fast Times is good, though, and very quotable.

Pretty in Pink

Pretty in Pink is kind of the defining romantic teen 80s comedy: class separation, cool/outcast, the goofy friend – it’s a very good movie, written, though not directed, by John Hughes.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

This movie is an extremely fun movie, but I have two major criticisms: the first is that the gains made are all by Cameron.  Ferris Bueller doesn’t grow on his day off.  Cameron does.  It’s arguable whether or not Sloane does.  Jeannie Bueller does more growing at the police station with Charlie Sheen than does Ferris.  Realistically, even though she’s the “villain,” if you were really Ferris’s sister, you’d hate him as much as she did.  He was a colossal prick! I’m sure, also, that Chicagoans cringe at the spatial understanding of the second city, just like I do when movies or TV shows are set in New York and they can get from West 3^rd street to Washington Heights in eight minutes, all without using the West Side Highway.  The second complaint I have is that Matthew Broderick was annoying in the role.  I’d have liked someone who seemed less fey and arrogant, someone who was more confident and classy.  I’d actually have preferred someone like Eric Stoltz in this role.  And the leopard print vest is kind of stupid.

Stand and Deliver

I don’t care if this isn’t really an 80s teen movie.  This is a damn good movie.  Its high school, but it’s a drama, and it is all based on a true story.  I know the teacher is the main character, but I still don’t care.  If you haven’t seen Stand and Deliver, and you want an uplifting, true story about inner city success over institutionalized racism, watch this.  Don’t watch Dangerous Minds or Freedom Writers Diary, or any of that horseshit where some pretty white lady comes in and wins over the hardened hearts of minority students without a pot to piss in.  Watch Stand and Deliver.

The Cream of the Crop

I can’t decide between these two:  It’s just 1/1A, and I don’t know which is which:

Say Anything

and

The Breakfast Club

Did I miss any?  Are my opinions, which can’t actually be wrong, something you disagree with?  If only there were some way to comment on this post.  Alas…