High school and college movies and TV shows are staples of cinema. Everyone loves them and some of our most beloved classics fit into one or the other group. Of course, if your school was anything like mine, most movies and TV shows are entirely unrealistic. That doesn’t make us love them any less, but it makes us wonder what the giveaway would be if we were living in a movie or TV show.
Massive House Parties
Ok, so there were a few big house parties in my high school years, but not every weekend, and none like the ones you often see in movies. We certainly never had a band like Love Burger play like they (almost) did in the classic teen flick Can’t Hardly Wait. We also never had a bunch of bikers crash the party like Weird Science. The only realistic movie was Dazed & Confused when Pickford’s parents found out about the party in advance and shut down the whole thing.
Magical Proms
I had a blast at both my junior and senior proms. But it was just a dance in a theater at my school with minimal decorations and water as the only refreshment. It wasn’t anything magical, like you see in movies, with decorations clearly done by crack set designers and big-time bands, like Chuck Berry’s cousin in Back to the Future we just had a crappy rent-a-DJ that played '80s hip hop. And don’t even get me started on the undercover “prom” in Footloose that looks like professional party planners spent weeks setting it up. Where did the money for all those balloons come from? And no one actually lost their virginity after prom, did they?
Everyone Looks 25 Years Old (Or Older)
Did everyone who went to your high school look like they had to have “flunked about nine grades” like Carolyn Mumford in 16 Candles? Yeah, me neither. We didn’t have anyone who looked like he was stressed out about his mortgage payments like Dylan McKay, played by legendary Luke Perry, did on Beverly Hills, 90210, either. Did anyone at West Beverly look like high school kids? And I know Rizzo in Grease is supposed to be the wise, street-smart one, but she looks old enough to have done time in prison (she’s still my favorite character though and Stockard Channing is an American treasure).
All The Parents Look 35 Years Old And Are Never Around
While all the kids look 25, all the parents look way too young to be their parents. Like, for example, Amy Poehler in Mean Girls, who was just 33 when playing Rachel McAdams' mother (McAdams was 26). Or they look way too old. And that’s when they are around! What is it with parents constantly being out of town during the school year in the movies. I wish my parents went on luxury vacations and left me free to run the house when I was a teenager, like Tom Cruise’s parents in Risky Business or Emma Stone’s parents in Superbad. I wish.
Everyone Is Worried About The Main Characters’ Problems
We live in a world of people suffering from “main character syndrome” but in our world, no one really cares about the main character. On-screen, however, it’s all anyone seems to care about. Yes, this is a bit obvious, but does every student need to have an opinion on the main character’s problems like they do in teen movies? In Cruel Intentions, for example, the entire school seems to be caught up in Kathryn’s drama, right up until the end.
All The Time In The World Between Classes
This one drives me the most nuts. When I was in school, we had 5 minutes between bells. That was five minutes to get up from class, get to your locker, grab your books, and be in your seat for the next class. How is it that kids seemingly have hours between classes? Sure, Not Another Teen Movie is just making fun of teen movies, but they spend more time in the hallway than actually in class. On Saved By The Bell, there never seemed to ever be a bell, just shenanigans in the stairwell!
Classes Only Exist For The Last Five Minutes Of A Period
When kids actually do make it to class, those classes all seem to exist for only the last couple of minutes and teachers are forced to yell out the homework assignments over the bustle of everyone rushing to the hallway to hang out for a while. My teachers had watches, they knew when the bell was going to ring, why was the teacher in Dazed and Confused struggling to get out her point in the last seconds of the school year? Even Indiana Jones seemed to only teach for the final few minutes of class, even when his students loved him!
Everyone Is Always Hanging Out In Front Of School In The Morning
Another trope that drives me nuts is how many kids are just hanging out in front of school before the first bell. If I was on time for school, I was just on time and I certainly wasn't tossing around a football or playing hacky sack on the steps of school waiting to go in. No one was. We were all rushing to get in on time. No one at my school would have been there to laugh at Billy when he showed up in his Trans Am in Billy Madison. There wouldn't have been dozens of girls to choose from when Laney Boggs is chosen in that terrible bet in She's All That, either.
The New Kid Gets Introduced Before Every Class
How many times did you get a new kid join in the middle of the year? How many times did that kid get dramatically introduced in class? Never? Yeah, didn’t happen to me either. That would be torture for a new kid, yet there it is, all over high school movies and TV shows. Like the slow-mo walk-in for Christian in the Gen X classic Clueless. They certainly weren’t embarrassed by the teacher like Josie in Never Been Kissed.
Over The Top Pronouncements Of Love
Nothing says “teen flick” like an overly dramatic gesture of love and while we all may think about doing it, no one actually stands outside someone’s house with a boombox like John Cusack in Say Anything or Heath Ledger singing with the school band in 10 Things I Hate About You. How did the band learn “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” so quickly anyway? Wouldn’t that take weeks of rehearsal? While we all love the way these scenes play out in movies, and they all bring a sweet tear to our eye, it’s never going to happen in real life, right?
Everyone Is In A Clique
Cliques exist in school, sure. There are the cool kids and the “math kids” and the football players and the greasers... ok, maybe not the greasers anymore. If your school’s cliques are so pronounced that everyone always sits at the same lunch table, every day, however, you need to evaluate if you’re living in an AI simulation of a movie. Mean Girls and Heathers have good examples of this in film, but nowhere is this more clear, though less true, than the honest, realistic characters in The Breakfast Club mocking the whole idea as “A Brain... And An Athlete... And A Basket Case... A Princess... And A Criminal.”
Everyone Fits A Stereotype
Speaking of cliques, another popular trope is that everyone in the movie fits exactly into one stereotype. Sure, it’s so movies can quickly develop a character. The jocks are always idiots, like in Revenge of the Nerds, the cheerleaders are always mean, like Revenge of the Nerds and the good students are always nerds, as in Revenge of the Nerds. Well, I guess that movie is problematic for a few reasons (at least the nerds win). I don’t know about you, but when I was in school, the lines were way more blurred. The best athlete in my school was also student body president and starred in every musical. People don’t fit into boxes!
Everyone Is In A Relationship
I don’t know about you, but the number of couples that were consistently together in my high school (and college for that matter), was pretty low. Mostly, it was a bunch of teenagers scamming each other and randomly hooking up at parties. In movies, however, it seems everyone is in a committed relationship, and those relationships are destined to last forever. From Marty McFly in Back to the Future to Ferris Bueller, everyone has found their soul mate. It’s no wonder because when we’re kids we all think love will last forever, though most of us find it more often it was fleeting when we look back.
Your Freshman Year Roommate Is Your New BFF
I was friends with my freshman-year roommate in college for about a semester. We got along great, but as the year wore on, we found our social groups and our own friends. After freshman year, I don’t think we hung out once, while on TV like Max's breakout hit The Sex Lives of College Girls, everyone is immediately best friends with their roommates. The same thing happened when Denise Huxtable moved into her dorm on A Different World. It’s too bad we can’t all live with our best friends like they did.
Everyone Is Dressed Like A Fashion Show
Yes, this too is a bit obvious, but just because the characters are on TV doesn’t mean they have to dress like they are going to a country club like the "richies" in Pretty In Pink, nor do even the most popular girls ever coordinate colors like Heathers and Mean Girls (those two sure have a lot in common). Most of the kids at my school showed up in tee shirts and jeans, once again, Dazed and Confused got this one right.
Your Dorm Room Is As Big As An Apartment
This is another one that never seems to have any basis in reality. Again, I can point to The Sex Lives Of College Girls. Sure, it’s hilarious, but their dorm room in the first season is bigger than my first apartment. I barely had a closet, much less my own bathroom or a living room. In Gilmore Girls, Rory had not one, but two fireplaces in her dorm room at Yale. Although to be fair, that might actually be true of some of those old dorms at the Ivy League school, I wouldn’t know.
You Show Up Alone For Your Freshman Year Of College
My mom took me to college. I was grateful to have her, even if I was embarrassed. I don’t don’t know anyone who showed up alone. It seems in movies, though, it’s pretty common for a freshman to just show up alone, usually with little in the way of stuff. In Every Wants Some! Jake shows up for school, by himself, with nothing, it seems, but one box and a small duffel bag, enough for a long weekend, but that’s about it. Traveling even lighter is Beca (Anna Kendrick) in Pitch Perfect. Not only does she arrive on campus by cab, she’s by herself with only one suitcase. That’s going to be a lot of trips to the laundry room.
There are plenty of good reasons in the context of telling a good story for all of these tropes and weird occurrences for those living in movies and TV shows, and we don't really think of them much as we're watching. We keep streaming these teen movies and we love the characters, so odd things don't really stand out, but when you really think about how unrealistic things are sometimes, it can get bizarre. So be grateful you're living in the real world!
