The 19 Best Teen Movies Ever Made

The teen movie as most of us know it came of age in the 1980s, making it a creature of Generation X. But in truth, the best teen movies transcend generational boundaries—and not just because some of them came well after the initial John Hughes heyday, or, for that matter, well before the assembly line of Hughes imitations and JV-level Animal Houses were established. The best teen movies are able to speak to a teenage audience while resonating well past that relatively narrow slice of life. As they’ve grown in number and ambition over the years—no offense, ‘60s beach-party movies!—teen movies have also been able to offer an increasing number of youth-culture snapshots. Even more than other types of movies, sorting through the best ones feels like riding around in a time machine.

To do this properly, though, we need to establish some ground rules. Foremost: No horror. This is not out of disrespect; it’s just that teen-related horror is a whole other thing that deserves its own list, rather than wedging teen-centric classics like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and It Follows onto this one. That is not exactly to say that the teen movie serves as its own completely distinct genre; it’s not as if any movie that has a teenager as a main character automatically counts. For example: We’ve left masterpieces like Rushmore, Election, and Almost Famous off this list, not because they have no relationship to the coming-of-age narrative or the classic teen movie, but because they have too many major adult characters. Adults aren’t forbidden in this world, yet Almost Famous isn’t really about teenagers, per se; it’s about a music journalist and fan on tour with a rock band. The rock band is made up of adults; the journalist’s mentor and mother are adults. Patrick Fugit and Kate Hudson are playing teens, but the movie feels like it belongs in a different category. Similarly, only one of the three biggest roles in Rushmore is a teenager, and Election (the closest call here) is heavily informed by the point-of-view of a disappointed, fully adult male. Everything on this list is firmly oriented in a teenage point of view, with at least a slim majority of non-adult characters occupying the screen.

Finally: No John Hughes. That’s not a rule. That’s just a fact that I’m acknowledging upfront in futile hopes of avoiding angry emails. I know Sixteen Candles has some funny bits. (It has some pretty gross stuff in it, too.) I know you love The Breakfast Club; I know it inspired a lot of other things, such as that one episode of Dawson’s Creek and that one episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation. It’s fine. But Hughes’ work, notable as it is, never really spoke to me. And honestly, who needs anyone telling them to watch The Breakfast Club? It’s in the Criterion Collection. Anyway, there are obviously more candidates for the best teen movies than the following 19 titles, but cutting this one off at 19 just made sense.

Nancy Drew… Reporter (1939)