17 Essential High School Movies To Celebrate Back-to-School

An essential high school movie list without the all-time classic Clueless? AS IF! It's a little hard to believe that this movie is more than 25 years old, especially because we still covet about half of Cher's wardrobe from the movie.

Heath Ledger was really at his peak of dreaminess in this classic modern update of William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. The chemistry between Ledger and Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You was so good, and we have to give a special shout-out to Allison Janney's romance writing guidance counselor character. Here's hoping she finished that book eventually!

Before she dominated the box office with the blockbuster Barbie movie this summer, director Greta Gerwig was perfectly capturing the sometimes prickly, sometimes loving relationship between high school girls and their mothers in the indie film Lady Bird.

OK, clearly Bring it On is one of the all-time great high school films, but can we talk for a moment about how Gabrielle Union has basically not aged in the 23 years since this movie came out? The Clovers just stay winning, it seems.

One of the classic high school movie tropes is the idea of the "one last night" for friends to do something wild and crazy before graduation. Booksmart is a fresher take on that story and has all the humor and cringe that usually comes with these stories. It's probably not one to watch with younger kids, though, for anyone looking for movie night ideas.

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Movie fans who like to root for the quirkier characters will, of course, love Napoleon Dynamite. From Uncle Rico to Pedro to Tina the llama, all of the characters are so original. There is a reason we still see people rocking Napoleon Dynamite costumes at Halloween! It's a classic!

Grease was an essential sleepover movie for a lot of us elder Millennials and Gen Xers, and it is still super popular, especially for fans who are able to ignore how every actor looks about 10 years too old to be playing a high schooler.

Some high school movies are lighthearted and sweet. The 1980s cult classic Heathers is NOT one of those movies. Heathers is dark, sometimes funny, and gave some of us some very complicated feelings about the hot but evil character played by a baby-faced Christian Slater.

Wild prom nights are a recurring theme in high school movies, but Blockers did it better than almost any other. The movie, starring a very funny and game John Cena, was hilarious but so raunchy that we don’t want to watch it with any actual high schoolers in the room.

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We love Reese Witherspoon, of course, but sometimes we wonder how much acting she actually had to do while playing the tightly wound character of Tracy Flick in the dark comedy Election. The actress is famously driven and has a type A personality, and there might be not better character to exemplify that than the power-crazed Tracy.

Although Matthew Broderick has had a long and successful acting career, it's hard to imagine a character he's played that is more iconic than the carefree (and shockingly lucky at times) Ferris Bueller! This movie is almost 40 years old, and people still quote the "Bueller...Bueller..." line, so we think it will be an essential high school movie for a long time.

Sigh. Is there a cuter couple than Peter and Lara Jean? No, no there is not. To All The Boys I've Loved Before was an amazing young adult book, and the film adaptation is an actual delight. We're not ashamed to admit to a little swooning over Peter Kavinsky.

Sometimes we want movies that help us escape the harder realities of life. Sometimes a really great movie, such as The Hate U Give, can help us better understand and talk to our kids about those realities. This isn't always the easiest high school movie to watch, but it's an important one.

Oh goodness. A young Patrick Dempsey playing a shy nerd trying to win the love of the head cheerleader? Yep. This was one of his first roles, and little did we all know that he'd go on to become the one and only Dr. McDreamy one day!

Mean Girls is the classic comedy about a new kid in school trying to find her place, and we love it for that, but we also appreciate it for being a cautionary tale of sorts. No mom who watches it will aspire to be the "cool mom" after watching Amy Poehler's character!

OK, this might be our most unexpected choice on the list (and possibly the one that had the least impact at the box office) but for fans of Wes Anderson's signature style and visuals, this one is considered a total classic!

Families with younger kids might love High School Musical (or one of its seemingly endless spin-off options) as a back to school movie night choice. It's a little cheesy, but the songs are still fun bops and the tame romance makes it not too cringy to watch as a family.