Cooler temperatures, falling leaves, and the scent of pumpkin spice in the air herald the arrival of fall, which also brings with it the end of summer vacations and the anticipated/dreaded return to school for kids of all ages everywhere. In celebration of (or commiseration for) that fact, we've put together the 25 best back-to-school movies to experience during study hall, in between homework assignments, or just whenever you need a hit of nostalgia.
But this isn't just any list of random school-related movies. These 25 films will take you on a journey from grade school all the way through to college and beyond. Yes, now that you've matriculated at Collider University, you can follow along with this syllabus guiding you step by step through the best school movies that Hollywood has to offer, from the 2006 delight Akeelah and the Bee to new classics and old favorites set in high school and college, to teacher-centric films like Mr. Holland's Opus; we haven't forgotten the educators in our favorite back-to-school films. So check out our list and then watch the films so you can move to the head of the class. Even if you've seen them all, you might learn a thing or two along the way!
Kindergarten Cop
We all had to start our academic journey somewhere, and for most of us, the first stop was kindergarten. Now, there aren't too many major movies in existence that center on a classroom of five-year-olds, so the pickins are a little slim here, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include Ivan Reitman's Kindergarten Cop in this list. It's far from Oscar-worthy, but it's a great example of Arnold Schwarzenegger's range as a comedic lead, especially since his only previous comedic work came opposite Danny DeVito in 1988's Twins. This time, his co-stars are a bunch of rambunctious kindergarteners whose chaotic energy overwhelms the normally indomitable strong-man. So even if the plot of Kindergarten Cop has nothing to do with school whatsoever, this film is as great a place to start your back-to-school revisit as any.
Akeelah and the Bee
Things get a little more serious once we start talking about scripts that throw around such words as xanthosis, logorrhea, and pulchritude. Writer/director Doug Atchison's Akeelah and the Bee was an original film inspired by the true-life talented grade-schoolers who tackle the toughest words each year in Scripps National Spelling Bee. The 2006 film starring Keke Palmer sought to inspire kids and parents alike, especially concerning families from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. While it does fall into some familiar tropes and expected plot turns, Akeelah remains an inspirational story that reminds each and every one of us that sometimes the toughest challenges to overcome are the ones we impose upon ourselves.
The Breakfast Club
Let's jump up to high school with the first of many John Hughes classics. The Breakfast Club focuses on the more disciplinary side of school and throws five teenagers from different cliques together one Saturday for all-day detention. Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy came together to form the "Brat Pack" in this 1985 film, Hughes' follow-up to 1984's Sixteen Candles. It's one of the first films you think of when someone asks you to list the best high school movies in history and for good reason: Not only does it play up the typical high school stereotypes in each of the film's lead roles, it twists them in a way that blurs the lines between the supposedly disparate personalities. The young cast finds unity in a shared defiance against an over-the-top disciplinarian in Paul Gleason's assistant principal Richard Vernon. Anti-authoritarian messages are a hallmark of some of the best school films, and The Breakfast Club is among the finest examples of this.
Mean Girls
Sometimes high school movies attempt to teach us that people aren't really all that different despite their cliques. Other times, like in Mark Waters' 2004 comedy Mean Girls, they show that those cliques are immature and temporary realities at best, and they get the message across in hilarious fashion. Mean Girls isn't just one of those "survive high school and everything will be fine" type of movies, it's one that's genuinely funny and earnest in its handling of high school girl drama, thanks in part to its source of inspiration, Rosalind Wiseman's non-fiction self-help book "Queen Bees and Wannabes."
New student Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) is, by all rights, a well-rounded student whose homeschooled background has ill-prepared her for the insanity that is public high school. Cady is at first rejected by a top-tier clique before being absorbed into it, eventually ending up back where she started but with a new perspective on high school and life in general. Mean Girls is a fantastically quotable slice of high school life that's all too real and a reminder that, blissfully, only exists for a brief moment in all our lives.
Footloose
While the premise of Herbert Ross' 1984 musical drama Footloose sounds like it was conjured up in a Hollywood boardroom--a Chicago teen moves to a small town where a local minister has outlawed dancing and rock music--it was actually inspired by a similar way of life in a small Oklahoma town. It might sound like a straight-up story of kids acting out against authority, but newcomer Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon) actually goes to great pains in order to befriend the local kids, expand their horizons, and meet the town's conservative council halfway by citing Biblical passages in praise of dancing and celebrations.
Footloose also explores the pitfalls of an abusive relationship, the deep pains suffered after the loss of a child and the mob mentality that can arise in even the most well-meaning of folks. The movie's got a lot more to it than just high school kids having a barn dance, so it's worth a revisit if only to remind ourselves what a group of like-minded youths can do when they put their heads together.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Look, school is great and everything, but sometimes you just need a day off. But no matter how epic your plans are for a skip day, there's no way you're going to reach the epic heights of slackerdom achieved in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Though it doesn't star the famous Brat Pack, this Hughes film that takes place mostly outside of high school is every bit as good as those that are set inside one.
Matthew Broderick had been on the Hollywood scene for a handful of films at this point, but his fourth-wall-breaking title character remains the actor's most notable role. And for a screenplay written up in less than a week, it's surprisingly refreshing and consistently funny, even 30 years later. One part celebration of all things Chicago and one part celebration of the evanescence of youth, Ferris Bueller is a go-to classic amongst high school movies, even as it acts as a respite from other movies in the same category.
Grease
Grease is way more musical than any high school experience has any right being--and the students are far older than any high schooler in history--but it remains a necessary inclusion on a list of best school-related movies. Randal Kleiser's 1978 musical romance is nearly two hours of an absolute fever dream that ramps up the 1950s glory days glimpsed in Warren Casey and Jim Jacobs' original play. The film follows the romance between the local Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and the vacationing Sandy Olsson (the late, great Olivia Newton-John), and though it starts out in the summer of 1958, it finds the summer lovers reunited during their senior year of high school. During the film's inevitable march to the seniors' graduation, the tumultuous romance plays out over a climate drag races, concerns over teen pregnancy, and dance competitions. The 50s may never come around again, but Grease will always be the ideal version of how things were back in the good ol' days.
October Sky
This is our first actual biographical film in the list, but not the last. Joe Johnston's 1999 drama followed the young life of Homer H. Hickam, Jr. (Jake Gyllenhaal), the son of a coal miner who, after the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, took up rocketry, a past time that would lead to him becoming a NASA engineer. Hickam Jr.'s own 1998 memoir "Rocket Boys" served as the source material for the film; the title of the film is an anagram of the book's title and a marketing decision intended to broaden its audience appeal.
The story, which follows a West Virginia school boy who finds a way out of his small coal-mining town through science, should cover all four quadrants without any additional marketing gimmicks, but it's one school-related film that's often overlooked. Thanks to the support of Hickam Jr.'s science teacher (Laura Dern) and his fellow Rocket Boys, they're able to overcome a lot of adversity--ridicule from friends and family, accusations of starting a forest fire with their rockets by the local authorities, union strikes, and family drama--and find success (and retribution) thanks to science. It's a fantastic inspirational tale that just goes to show how important it is to encourage an interest in sciences from an early age; you never know what might develop from it.
Sixteen Candles
Back to Hughes! His 1984 directorial debut Sixteen Candles might just be the quintessential coming-of-age comedy, at least as far as fans of 16-year-old Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) are concerned. The story tracks a rough couple of days for Samantha, who sees her entire family forgetting her most important birthday amidst plans for her older sister's wedding, the unintentional reveal of her high school crush (Michael Schoeffling), and an awkward interaction with one of the school's most persistent nerds (Anthony Michael Hall). What starts out as a Murphy's Law kind of day for Sam soon turns into a surprisingly rewarding birthday for her after all.
And yet, watching this celebrated Hughes' film in the modern day, it's hard not to notice the flagrant racist and sexist writing that passed for humor in '84 but would be shouted down today. Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe) or a similar caricature of an Asian exchange student might still show up in some capacity in crude comedies today but not without drawing the ire of social activists, and the treatment of popular high school girl Caroline Mulford (Haviland Morris) is reprehensible. If there was a cut that removed Long Duk Dong's plot and the overtly creepy and prepubescent fantasy that is the drunk, off-screen rape of Miss Mulford, Sixteen Candles would be even more relevant today. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged as well as it could have otherwise.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
There are so many notable things about Fast Times at Ridgemont High that have nothing to do with the film itself that the story could (almost) be overlooked in favor of the movie's cultural significance: It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2005, it's the feature directorial debut of Amy Heckerling, the debut adaptation/screenplay work for Oscar-winner Cameron Crowe, and featured early (or debut) roles for Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicolas Cage (as Nicolas Coppola), Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, and Anthony Edwards. That's crazy.
The story itself was inspired by Crowe's experiences going undercover at San Diego's Clairemont High School for Rolling Stone magazine. It centers on a year in the lives of two sophomore students and their older and more experienced friends; subplots spin up around Reinhold's popular senior Brad and his employment difficulties, and Penn's stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli and his struggle against authority. Arriving earlier than a lot of the other contemporary classics on this list since it debuted in 1982, it earns points for originality as a trendsetter.
10 Things I Hate About You
If Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Sixteen Candles were responsible for introducing 80s audiences to some of the best actors of their generation, then Gil Junger's 1999 comedy 10 Things I Hate About You did the same for a new generation, providing breakout roles for Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and, to a lesser extent, Larisa Oleynik. The late 90s high school setting for a modern take on Shakespeare's mid-16th century play "The Taming of the Shrew" introduced American audiences to the Australian heartthrob Ledger and offered up the best feature film outing to that point in Gordon-Levitt's career; JGL was smack in the middle of his run on the hit TV comedy series Third Rock from the Sun at the time.
10 Things has a clever twist on the typical high school romantic comedy, thanks in huge part to Shakespeare, of course. When a new student (Gordon-Levitt) falls for a beautiful girl (Oleynik), he finds he can only win her father's approval to date her by tricking the school's bad boy (Ledger) into dating her older, shrewish sister (Stiles). It's a great example of how timeless Shakespeare's work really is and how modern takes on centuries-old stories can engage a new generation of audiences.
Election
Oscar-winning writer/director Alexander Payne adapted and directed Election, an Oscar-nominated 1999 high school dramedy based on Tom Perrotta's 1998 novel. The book's premise, and that of the movie that followed after, was a darkly comedic take on a high school teacher's attempts to sabotage the presidential campaign of an ambitious, manipulative student, aiming to take her down a notch or two. Reese Witherspoon played the scheming student Tracy Flick to great effect opposite Matthew Broderick's out-matched history teacher, Jim McAlister.
While Election obviously focused on high school politics surrounding the campaign for class presidency, the story also dipped into inappropriate sexual relationships between teachers and students, reputations (perceived and otherwise) of both the faculty and the student body, and adolescent ambitions, whether sexual, political or academic in nature. The lessons Election attempts to teach us are frustratingly realistic and apt; the characters who get everything they've always wanted find they're still lacking a sense of fulfillment, those who lack ambition stumble into an easy life of leisure and happiness, and the ones who try to control a situation that's beyond their grasp end up losing control of everything altogether. Don't expect any happy endings in this one.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's 2015 entry Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is the most recent addition to this list and serves to introduce newcomer RJ Cyler alongside Olivia Cooke (who had starred in the horror/thriller films Ouija, The Quiet Ones, and The Signal) and Thomas Mann, who partied in the high school rager Project X. Along with this new generation of young talent came a fresh approach to the high school comedy film. Based on Jesse Andrews' debut novel of the same name, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl centered on Greg (Mann) and his pal Earl (Cyler) who spent their time making short film parodies. When Greg's parents (Nick Offerman and Connie Britton) basically force him to spend time with a classmate of his who has been diagnosed with leukemia (Cooke), Greg soon puts all of his time and effort into finishing a film dedicated to the dying girl.
And while this sounds sweet on the surface, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is more about a teenager, who has a one-track mind but lacks empathy, who learns to put his friends and their feelings on an equal footing with his own personal passions. Due in part to its realistic though bittersweet ending--the title is not misleading--Me and Earl and the Dying Girl easily earns a spot in the best high school movies category.
Dead Poets Society
A relative few of us spent a share of our young academic lives in private institutions or boarding schools, but I'd say it's a safe bet that a lot of your favorite school films took place in such a setting. Perhaps the best among these is Dead Poets Society, featuring one of the late Robin Williams' most endearing efforts as an unconventional teacher acting within a regimented elite boarding school. The title refers to the unsanctioned and secretive group of students that unorthodox literature teacher John Keating (Williams) was part of during his time as a student at the school, a group that senior Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) restarts with his friends.
This central revolt against authority and attempt to explore each students' individuality does not come without a price: members of the club are coerced, some essentially tortured, into divulging its secrets and "naming names", and others who lack the conviction to stand up to their detractors pay the ultimate price. The lessons learned here do not reach each student equally with some taking Keating's teachings to heart moreso than others. And while you might remember the famous "O Captain! My Captain!" scene better than any others, the full film is most definitely worth a revisit for its wealth of powerful, touching moments.
Fame
Not all school movies have to do with textbooks and pop quizzes as the 1980 Oscar-winning film Fame goes to show. Following a group of teenage students at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, Fame splits into segments following their auditions, and their freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years. We get to see the hopes and dreams (and spectacular failures) of would-be artists in the school's drama, musical, and dance departments, a side of academia that's rarely explored in cinema. Academic studies are certainly important throughout the film, but it's the artistic growth and development of each of the main characters that makes Fame an engaging experience. It's hard to believe that the movie, which clocks in at only two-and-a-quarter hours, manages to track so many disparate rises and falls while intermingling their personal successes and failures at the same time. Not everyone will make it in this business, but anyone can get a taste of Fame.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
If there's one private boarding school we all wish we'd gone to, it's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Chris Columbus' 2001 adaptation of the bestselling Harry Potter books kicked off a massive franchise for Warner Bros. that continues to this day. It also introduced worldwide audiences to newcomers Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint as the fresh-faced Gryffindor students who would soon be surrounded by magic and mayhem. Hogwarts is arguably the most magical academic institution ever seen on film, so much so that even the dreaded Potions classes and Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons seem impossibly desirable to us Muggles. Who among us could resist the siren's call of a Hogwarts letter delivered by owl on our eleventh birthday? Sure, there may be trolls in the dungeon and darker things still the deeper you go, but Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone remains the purest magical exploration of the wizarding universe to date.
Rushmore
Rushmore, director/co-writer Wes Anderson's 1998 follow-up to Bottle Rocket, cemented Anderson's status as a uniquely visionary filmmaker and saw Jason Schwartzman in his debut role as the eccentric teenager Max Fischer. Not only did this tale about a love triangle between a teenager, a wealthy industrialist, and a grade school teacher help to firm up the peculiar quirkiness that Anderson and his acting entourage would become known for, it also ushered in a wave of independent films for Bill Murray, kickstarting the second phase of his storied career.
Rushmore is certainly the most unconventional film on this list, as are its characters, which is the convention of Anderson. Fischer fails in all manner of academic measures but succeeds wildly in extracurricular activities, while Blume (Murray) is successful but unfulfilled; the two find a mutual respect and friendship in each other, which is soon shattered thanks to a shared attraction towards the newly arrived teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). Rushmore also finds Max out of his comfort zone when he attends a public school, an experience that (eventually) dramatically raises his maturity level. So whether you're looking for an offbeat school movie or just want to watch an older Anderson film, Rushmore is the place for you!
Monsters University
Since so many college movies are all about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, I thought we'd do well to start off with a palate cleanser in Disney/Pixar's Monsters University. This family-friendly follow-up to Monsters, Inc. is actually a prequel story about the early days of Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully's (John Goodman) friendship during their time at the titular fright-filled institution. What, you thought you were just born to be a scary monster without a need for special training? Well, that's exactly what Sully thinks in this clever, heartfelt film. The physically gifted scarer finds himself in constant competition with the pint-sized cyclops whose tenacious study habits put the underdog on equal footing with his classmates who possess more natural abilities. It's definitely not a conventional college film, but it's got enough of the familiar elements that are painted in a monstrous veneer, making Monsters University a uniquely enjoyable entry on this list.
Animal House
It goes without saying that Animal House is probably among the first films that come to mind when thinking about college movies, and with good reason. The 1978 comedy classic directed by John Landis and starring such notable names as John Belushi, Kevin Bacon, Tom Hulce, Tim Matheson, Donald Sutherland, and Karen Allen would be imitated and paid homage to for decades to come. It's arguably the quintessential college gross-out movie and, for better or worse, came to define what folks of when they heard the words "frat party."
In 2001, Animal House was also selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, making it the second film on our list to receive the honor. And despite the underdog stories in college movies that would follow later on, the protagonists of Animal House are utterly defeated by the powers that be throughout the movie, leaving them with only one recourse: to create as much havoc as humanly possible and leave a lasting, legendary legacy behind them. I'd say they succeeded both on screen and off in this regard.
Back to School
Here's a film that gets just about as much respect as its lead character. Back to School was a 1986 comedy starring Rodney Dangerfield as Thornton Melon, a self-made, successful businessman who enrolls in college alongside his dejected son Jason (Keith Gordon) in order to keep him in school. Far from being a tale about how hard work can get you through even the most imposing obstacles, Thornton buys his admission into the school and parties his way through all of his classes while romancing a literature professor and drawing the ire of other faculty members. In a classic sequence that would be repeated by similar movies that came after it, Thornton is challenged to pass one final test that should he fail any part of it, he'll be expelled. With the help of his son and his classmates--and a wildly screaming Sam Kinison--Thornton passes; he even manages to pull off a Triple Lindy in the process!
In a fun bit of trivia, author Kurt Vonnegut appears as himself, along with Danny Elfman's band "Oingo Boingo," who composed the score for the film. Robert Downey Jr. also appears in one of his earliest roles.