These classics just keep getting better
By Robert Newton

While most back-to-schoolers are still too green to appreciate the Pink Floyd lyric, “Shorter of breath and one day closer to death” that another year passed signifies, a more amusing way to mark the time is with some of these mostly funny movies about those allegedly memorable school days.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Writing about high school movies without mentioning John Hughes is like excluding the likes of Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige from a serious discussion about baseball greats. While the reclusive Hughes wrote and directed ‘80s teen staples like the perceptive Sixteen Candles (1984) and the immortal The Breakfast Club (1985) ~ and wrote other minor classics like Pretty In Pink (1986) and Some Kind Of Wonderful (1987) ~ it is this 1986 comedy starring Matthew Broderick as the coolest high school kid ever that is Hughes at his all-around sharpest.

Can’t Buy Me Love – Before Patrick Dempsey was “Dr. Dreamy” on “Grey’s Anatomy,” he got his start in this gimmicky but fun 1987 comedy about a nerd who pays a popular girl to hang out with him. The movie was moved to an urban setting and remade in 2003 as Love Don’t Cost A Thing, as will the upcoming remake of the classic Adventures In Babysitting (starring Elizabeth Shue) , which is to star former “Cosby Show” star and teen favorite Raven-Symone.

Just One Of The Guys – One-hit wonder Joyce Hyser plays a hot girl who masquerades as a hot guy (to prove a point) in this 1985 guilty pleasure, a La Cage Aux Folles for the teen set. Drew Barrymore went back to high school undercover in Never Been Kissed (1999). Other guilty pleasures include the John Cusack launcher Better Off Dead (1985), the Corey Haim weeper Lucas (1986), and the super-stylish Three O’Clock High (1988).

Valley Girl” – Martha Coolidge directed two of the coolest teen films of the ‘80s, the geek favorite Real Genius (1986) starring Val Kilmer and this 1983 gem that starred a baby-faced Nicolas Cage and a smokin’ Deborah Foreman. (On a not totally unrelated note, Coolidge gained another point of cred for the very grown-up Rambling Rose (1991) starring Laura Dern, but lost twelve for putting her name to the crime against humanity that was Material Girls (2006), starring the Sisters Duff.)

Heaven Help Us – “Holy crap,” viewers of Michael Dinner’s 1985 dramatic comedy often find themselves saying, “Is that Johnny Drama?” Johnny Drama, of course, is famous sib Kevin Dillon, who stars on the HBO hit “Entourage.” The film, set in a Catholic boys’ prep school in Brooklyn in 1965, also stars Andrew McCarthy and Mary Stuart Masterson, with great supporting performances by Donald Sutherland, John Heard and a hilarious Wallace Shawn as a fear-mongering teacher. Get religious with Back To School star Keith Gordon’s adaptation of the late Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (1988) and the snarky Culkin comeback, Saved! (2004).

Animal House – “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son,” Dean Wormer (John Vernon) advises the fat, drunk and stupid Bluto (John Belushi) in John Landis’s 1978 smash about a reviled fraternity. Slightly less famous party boys were Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) in Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982), whose director Amy Heckerling also helmed the totally awesome Emma update, Clueless (1995), and Slater (Rory Cochrane) in Richard Linklater’s resin-scented Dazed and Confused (1993).