{"id":7964,"date":"2019-05-28T16:13:08","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T23:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/?p=7964"},"modified":"2019-05-28T16:13:08","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T23:13:08","slug":"booksmart-and-seven-more-great-high-school-movies-you-should-see-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/best-high-school-movies-app\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Booksmart&#8217; And Seven More Great High School Movies You Should See"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All work and no play makes the overachieving BFFs of <em>Booksmart<\/em> dull girls \u2013 in their own minds, at least. However, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) aren\u2019t about to graduate high school and let everyone else have all the fun. They put their smarts and hard work into one crazy night out before graduation, and the end result is one of the best-reviewed movies of the year.<\/p>\n<p>With Olivia Wilde&#8217;s high school comedy in theaters, we&#8217;re getting nostalgic for past movies with brainy young women. Whether they\u2019re winning Mathlete tournaments, dreaming of the stars, or writing novels, these are the teen girls and high school movies that have wowed audiences with their wits.<\/p>\n<h2>1. \u2018Mean Girls\u2019 (2004)<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KAOmTMCtGkI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the script from Tina Fey, there\u2019s real depth beneath the bubblegum-pink lip gloss finish of this teen comedy.<\/p>\n<p><em>Mean Girls<\/em> stars Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron, a new student who is a rock star at math. However, she lacks social intelligence when it comes to the strata of American high schools after being homeschooled in Africa by her zoologist parents. She schemes to get into The Plastics, the cool girl clique led by queen bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams), but popularity isn\u2019t all she dreamed it would be in this new world of gossip and rumors. Watching Cady play dumb to get the attention of Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett) is painful, but she\u2019s intelligent enough, in the end, to realize that it\u2019s better to be your smart Mathlete self than to get the cute boy to notice you.<\/p>\n<h2>2. \u2018Real Women Have Curves\u2019 (2002)<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aQ6V-goQvkA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Director Patricia Cardoso\u2019s Sundance favorite is mostly remembered for its body positive messaging, but it should also be celebrated for its representation of a super smart Latinx heroine.<\/p>\n<p><em>Real Women Have Curves<\/em> stars America Ferrera in her breakout role as Ana, a high school senior in East L.A. whose mother (Lupe Ontiveros) discourages her from applying to college in New York City and pressures her to work at her sister\u2019s sewing factory instead. However, Ana has worked hard throughout school and has the encouragement of a high school teacher (George Lopez), who pushes her to apply to Columbia University through his connections. Like its heroine, <em>Curves<\/em> is warm and funny with a self-confidence that sets it apart from its fellow coming-of-age movies.<\/p>\n<h2>3. \u2018Say Anything&#8230;\u2019 (1989)<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DeuZ7YPag1I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>If you grew up in the \u201880s, who among us didn\u2019t want to be Diane Court (Ione Skye),\u00a0<em>Say Anything<\/em>&#8216;s high school valedictorian who earned that famous boombox serenade by John Cusack\u2019s Lloyd Dobler? Beyond just being book smart, Diane is goal oriented and so focused on her future that she initially resists the underachieving Lloyd\u2019s pursuit of her. Many movies make female intelligence a romantic deterrent rather than an asset, but it\u2019s part of what attracts Lloyd to her. Ultimately, Diane doesn\u2019t give up what she wants when she does agree to be with him, and instead, he\u2019s the one who tags along with her as she jets off into her next academic adventure, a prestigious fellowship in England.<\/p>\n<h2>4. \u201810 Things I Hate About You\u2019 (1999)<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bJPru_tzHt4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Most of the time, smart girls in movies are the well-behaved ones, beloved by their teachers for both their intelligence and their good behavior. An exception to that rule is Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) in this loose adaptation of Shakespeare\u2019s <em>The Taming of the Shrew<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>10 Things I Hate About You<\/em> introduces her as she pulls into the high school parking lot, blasting Joan Jett\u2019s \u201cBad Reputation\u201d from her beat-up car. She reads <em>The Bell Jar<\/em> for fun and has well-developed opinions of Ernest Hemingway: \u201cHe was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers.\u201d Written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith, this is a rom-com at its core, but it gives Kat a life and dreams beyond a potential romance with Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), including the goal of going to Sarah Lawrence College. Kat is a rebel, but she isn\u2019t one without a cause; instead, she thinks for herself and encourages those around her to do the same.<\/p>\n<h2>5. \u2018The Sun Is Also a Star\u2019 (2019)<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iW4tRXmG4Hw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s hear it for the girls and women in STEM, who are vastly underrepresented on screen, but director Ry Russo-Young\u2019s hazy romance is a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n<p>Yara Shahidi stars as Natasha, a left-brain-leaning high school student who is obsessed with the stars. Unfortunately, she doesn\u2019t see astronomy as a viable career path, and instead plans on being a data scientist, which, let\u2019s be honest, is also pretty cool. She walks the audience through the Big Bang and multiverse theory, and her passion for learning is as clear as her crush on Daniel Bae (Charles Melton). <em>The Sun Is Also a Star<\/em> is adapted from Nicola Yoon\u2019s YA bestseller by Tracy Oliver (<em>Girls Trip<\/em>), and it offers not only a super sweet love story, but it also gives women, especially women of color, someone to look up to if they\u2019re into science.<\/p>\n<h2>6. \u2018Little Women\u2019 (1994)<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/T5EaRwowsrw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Presumably, women can identify with at least one of the March girls in Gillian Armstrong\u2019s <em>Little Women<\/em> \u2013 except Amy, who is the worst \u2013 but the smart, book-loving ones often find a kindred spirit in Winona Ryder\u2019s Jo. She writes imaginative novels that she and her three sisters turn into elaborate plays, and she desperately wishes she could go to college like her neighbor Laurie (Christian Bale). She also makes a persuasive argument for women\u2019s suffrage that didn\u2019t fall prey to the sexist logic of the day: That women deserve to vote because they\u2019re good.<\/p>\n<p>But the 1860s didn\u2019t favor female intelligence or ambition, making it difficult for Jo to find her way to becoming the writer she always dreamed of. Louisa May Alcott\u2019s best-known novel has been adapted a half-dozen other times on film, and director George Cukor\u2019s 1933 version is equally worthy of your time, particularly for Katharine Hepburn\u2019s spirited turn as Jo. Greta Gerwig\u2019s take, starring Saoirse Ronan as my favorite March sister, arrives in theaters on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n<h2>7. \u2018Clueless\u2019 (1995)<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RS0KyTZ3Ie4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Alicia Silverstone\u2019s Valley Girl doesn\u2019t feel like most of her peers here, but don\u2019t think that Cher Horowitz doesn\u2019t deserve to be on this list. Just because she loves the mall, it doesn\u2019t mean she\u2019s not smart. She\u2019s got a great vocabulary and knows how to negotiate her way to better grades, which may not be as good as actually earning them, but who am I to judge?<\/p>\n<p>She makes a solid argument for allowing refugees in America and connects it to her own life in a way that shows that she gets the concept, even if she can\u2019t pronounce Haitians (and bless director Amy Heckerling for keeping Silverstone\u2019s real gaffe in). Her knowledge of Latin America leaves something to be desired and she perhaps has an overdependence on CliffsNotes, but Cher does know Shakespeare and Monet. Most importantly, she knows when she\u2019s wrong and has the ability to learn and evolve and no longer be clueless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All work and no play makes the overachieving BFFs of Booksmart dull girls \u2013 in their own minds, at least. However, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) aren\u2019t about to graduate high school and let everyone else have all the fun. They put their smarts and hard work into one crazy night out before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":7611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-app"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7972,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions\/7972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}