Sorry kids, but you really did have to go back to school. The trigonometry isn’t going to learn itself, and the streets are just plain safer without all your skateboarding, and your texting, and your Slinkies flying around everywhere. And while you’re at it, get off our lawn! You should be inside, either learning about the Magna Carta or at least watching a movie to get you into the spirit of the new school year.
Check Out: The Best Movie Ever: Claustrophobia
But what to watch? What’s The Best Back to School Movie Ever? We’re SO glad you asked. This is Best Movie Ever, after all. CraveOnline’s film critics William Bibbiani, Witney Seibold, Fred Topel and Brian Formo are here to present their picks for the back to school movies they think stand above all of the rest, but don’t take their word for it. Read their choices and then scroll down to the bottom of the page to vote for your own personal favorite back to school movies. Which ones make you excited to take a test again? Oh, did we not mention it? You totally have a test. You should have studied.
Fred Topel:
I unironically love Grease 2. But I know, why not at least the bona fide Grease 1? Well, Grease is about a woman who completely changes her character and sells herself out to be liked by a guy. At its best, it may be a comment on that popular formula, but it may be part of the problem too. But Grease 2 has a a boy (Michael Carrington) create a character that the popular girl (Michelle Pfeiffer) thinks she wants, only to show her how ridiculous it is and why his real self is better.
The plot: Sandy’s cousin Michael Carrington (Caulfield) comes to Rydell High from England and falls for the Pink Lady leader Stephanie Zinone (Pfeiffer). When he learns her ideal mate is a mysterious biker type, he gives her exactly what she wants by becoming that character. He uses the money he makes writing papers for the T-Birds to fund his “Cool Rider” project. Way to work the public school system, Michael.
Grease 2 also opens with a song called “Back to School” so there’s that. I know Grease is a bona fide classic, but the music in the sequel rocks. “Reproduction,” “Cool Rider,” these songs rock so hard you might honestly forget that high school actually sucks. I mean, look, they’re both great but this is Best Movie Ever and Grease 2 is the Best Back to School Movie Ever.
Brian Formo:
Technically, Dazed and Confused details the last day of school for the local high school and middle school, but since I believe it is the best high school movie ever, allow me to make a case that it is also the best back to school movie ever. Placing the film into that category isn’t as forceful as it sounds.
Dazed and Confused essentially follows the new senior and freshman class. Both groups immediately take to their assigned roles of either all powerful or all submissive — on the day that their 8th and 11th grade years ended. Before they can even enjoy the idea of a summer the freshmen are paddled by Ben Affleck, doused in ketchup by Parker Posey, paraded around as party objects in front of resident cool creep Matthew McConaughey and forced to sign a declaration of leadership to the football team for the upcoming season.
Most back to school movies start with teenagers returning from the Caribbean or some first world young adults leadership camp. Richard Linklater’s film is set in the type of small, industrial town that might’ve become more irrelevant in commerce and distinction — with the exception of the school’s football team and hope in the town’s youth. You’ll see the same people in different settings in the summer, so the power structure within the school walls has to be defined for the next school year as soon as the current one ends. School might be out for summer, but school is most definitely not out forever. For Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) and friends, summer lasts as long as the walk across their middle school grass.
William Bibbiani:
The absolute horror of going back to school never leaves you; sorry kids, but those nightmares you have about going to class naked or forgetting all about your big final test never really go away. Ten years after I took my last class I find myself looking back not so much on the lessons themselves, which were the source of all my anxieties, but rather on the extracurricular activities that made my life a little more fun and gave me experiences on which I still draw for wisdom today. The clubs, the field trips, the school plays, the learning experiences you just can’t have sitting behind your desk and regurgitating factoids and mathematical formulas I have never – EVER – used since. (Do you hear me, math teachers?! I’VE NEVER USED THEM!)
So when I think about movies that make going back to school seem fun, or at least wholesomely formative, I can only seem to think of one that captures the real growing pains and amateur adventures involved. Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, a sort of anti-Ferris Bueller’s Day Off about an overachieving kid named Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) who loves school, and who runs dozens of awesome-looking clubs, but who gets really, really terrible grades. Impressively, Anderson’s film never takes the easy way out by advocating that all students should study hard and go to college; instead, he makes a simple but very mature point that staying motivated and pursuing your own individual interests are the lessons we should all take away from our school years, and never forget about afterwards.
Max Fischer is kind of my hero, when he isn’t creepily stalking his favorite teacher or destroying the life of his only friend. But he learns a valuable lesson and becomes a better person by the end… not be being a great student, but by using the school experience to test the boundaries of what he’s capable of, and pick himself back up again after life turns into one big, giant, sour lemon. And Fischer’s plays fucking rule.
Witney Seibold:
Here’s a curious and maddening detail about school movies that seems to persist over the course of generations: they are rarely about school. There are plenty of movies about teenagers, high school, and the social experience of entering the 9th through 12th grades, but it’s incredibly rare that any of these films focus on actual study, actual academia, actual, y’know, learning. This trend gets even worse when dealing with colleges. How many college films can you name that feature scenes in actual classrooms? If the movies are any indicator, high school is nothing but a series of hallways to get threatened in, restrooms built for gossip, and back corners designed for necking. College is an unending string of parties, fraternity hazing, and a gradual beer-induced evolution into protohumanity. School, the movies frequently argue, are not about education, but about the social unrest and inner turmoil of the students. Only occasionally will you get a film about the actual learning and growth of the students – and those ones are invariably about the teachers.
As such, my perhaps-controversial pick for the best back to school movie is going to be about the rigors of adolescent social unrest, and the horrific consequences thereof. And there are plenty to choose from, from Welcome to the Dollhouse, to anything Larry Clark or Harmony Korine have been involved with. I select the bleak, quiet, and depressing Elephant, Gus Van Sant’s 2003 fictionalized version of the Columbine High School shootings. This is a film about, essentially, the downtime in between the significant portions of your high school day. A lot of the day is spent walking… and walking… and walking… closed in by the square hallways around you, your mind drifting into your own pain. Yes, the film ends with a violent shooting spree, but Elephant is more moody and thoughtful than exploitative or sensationalistic. The two young perpetrators were sealed off. Lonely. Experiencing a pain and a psychosis that we can never know, and yet can somehow relate to immediately.
It may not make you excited for school – indeed, the effect may be the opposite – but there’s something honest and direct and emotionally accurate about the high school experience that Elephant presents to us. It’s not about cliques, drugs, or sex. It about mood.
