When the name George Lucas is mentioned, your mind might spring to a certain film. A film that was an immediate smash hit at the box office and ignited an obsession in moviegoers. That’s right, it’s American Graffiti. Before he shipped audiences off to a galaxy far, far away, he took a nostalgic look back at teen life in the early 1960s. Starring the likes of Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford, the film follows a group of friends over the course of one of their last nights of freedom before entering the adult world. As the sun sets on their adolescence, the characters begrudgingly accept to confront life’s inescapable crossroads.
However, American Graffiti’s coming-of-age story isn’t all about lamenting a lost youth. Through its irresistible soundtrack and gripping car races, Lucas injects the film with infectious energy. Moreover, anachronistic elements allow the film to be a perfect time capsule for a particular time and place. The film wasn’t a sensation just because it was offered some fun misadventures. The film allowed audiences to be transported back to a nostalgic time when all their friends were a short drive away and all their favorite songs were always playing on the radio. It’s a recipe that many other films have tried to replicate — a recipe for a type of film you might call the “high school last hurrah”. From reveling in the nostalgia of decades prior, to the rueful examination of a stage in life everyone lives through only once, there are many factors for why the high school last hurrah has become an enduring sub-genre across multiple generations.
In the decades that followed its release, it seems as though each generation would get some representation in the style of American Graffiti. Films like Dazed and Confused, Superbad, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Blockers, and Booksmart reuse many of the assets that made Lucas’s film a success. Each of the films’ events takes place over the course of one day and each acts as a snapshot of teenage life for a different decade. But in each film’s attempt to update the formula for a new decade, they are simultaneously underscoring the elements that the films share in common.
Starting with the more positive elements of the films, these teen films often have characters that are relatable for anyone who’s been to a high school. Whether it’s the loyal best friends of Superbad and Blockers, the charismatic burnouts of Dazed and Confused, or an obnoxious and adorable rich kid played by Skyler Gisondo, there are archetypes that seem to work best when they are in a high school setting. Someone like Gigi (Billie Lourd) in Booksmart would be wildly unbelievable and much less hilarious in any film whose logic couldn’t be explained by saying, "because they’re teenagers.”
Similarly, the ultimate goals of these films only have stakes because of the characters’ immaturity. Between getting the girl and having a single memorable night at a party, they are moments that only seem life-defining when they are happening for the first time. The nostalgia of the films is brewed from a concoction of longing for and laughing at a simpler time. In each of the films, the story focuses on an inflection point in its characters’ lives. While their actual goal may not always be that change, there is always a feeling of the hours dwindling before life is no longer going to be so easy, when the burdens of adulthood complicate the simple emotions of joy and sadness.
Across many genres, audiences seem to enjoy films about inflection points in people’s lives. Whether it’s a marriage or, more depressingly, the loss of a loved one, there is something undeniably compelling about seeing others go through life’s moments. The high school last hurrah derives its power from this same source. These films haven’t stuck around all this time just because they offer up a bit of nostalgia. The emotions run deeper in these films, often lamenting a loss of innocence in the characters as well.
In the case of American Graffiti, the loss of innocence coincided with a loss of kinship. As characters start to go their own ways, it became clear that most of these people were only friends out of proximity. So, as the kids grew up and moved away to experience what else the world had to offer, they found things and people that were more aligned with their own personalities. But this isn’t some epiphany that the characters come to by the end of the film. The beautiful contrast of the film is that it still manages to be exceptionally enjoyable despite the cloud of inevitable loss that blankets the whole film.
In the newer versions of this story, these themes have also been updated for the time. Superbad and Booksmart make it a point for the characters to remain in contact when they all go off to college. Cleverly though, this tweek from Lucas’s film never relinquishes the grasp of uncertainty that comes when the credits roll. Their futures may be a bit more ambiguous, but that cloud of loss never dissipates. Even if Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) drive off to get pancakes before Amy’s flight, that doesn’t mean that the two aren’t going to slowly lose touch over the coming years.
That’s the reason these films have endured across so many decades. They manage to uniquely balance a loss of innocence with a hilarious remembrance of a past everyone can relate to. And the single-night premise just amplifies the whirlwind of emotions that the characters and audiences go through. Furthermore, beyond the screen, these films also act as perfect springboards to launch new actors into stardom. What worked for Richard Dreyfuss almost 50 years ago is still working wonders for actors like Jonah Hill and Kaitlyn Dever all these years later. The high school last hurrah is showing no signs of going stale, especially when studios are seeing just how much money nostalgia can translate to at the box office. And as online connectivity continues to shrink the world, it will be fascinating to see what future updates are in store for these films.