7 Epic Romantic Comedies That Made Us Believe in High School Love
Photo: ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection1/9Movies about high school are far cry from teenage reality: the actors are older and pimple-free, the high schools are clean and shiny, and the plotlines lead anyone to believe that crushes are never as unrequited as they seem. That’s exactly why we love them: they trick us into thinking that everlasting love is as simple as two teens breaking cafeteria social boundaries to go to prom together. From the popular girl-falls-for-dweeby boy cliché to the Shakespearean adaptation, here are seven high school movies that made us believe in the beauty of young romance.
Photo: ©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection2/9The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries was one of the best things to happen to both Anne Hathaway’s career and to the shy, socially awkward high schooler who dreams of a fairytale kiss with the most popular guy in school. It taught us that the popular blond jock is only after one thing (a foot massage), and that true love is usually in front of us the whole time. In Princess Mia’s case, that’s in the form of mop-haired musician Michael (Robert Schwartzman) who plays the guitar and fixes cars. Mia loves Michael because he saw her when she was invisible, not because she was the newly-appointed princess of a bite-size European country.
Photo: ©Buena Vista Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection3/910 Things I Hate About You
Adapted from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things I Hate About You tells the story of the Stratford sisters (get it?) and their intertwining love stories. There’s the one played out by Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, made legendary by the scene in which Ledger’s bad boy Patrick serenades Stiles’ cool intellectual Katrina with a rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” over a megaphone. Meanwhile, transfer student Cameron (a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt) tries to win the heart of Katrina’s popular younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) by offering to tutor her in French despite not knowing a word of the language. We’d take French if it meant being tutored by a teenage JGL, too.
Photo: ©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection4/9Love & Basketball
Love & Basketball is more than a high school love story — it’s a lifelong romance between two childhood neighbors, Monica and Quincy (Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps) that blossoms on their driveway basketball courts, continues into high school, then ebbs and flows throughout college and their post-grad lives. Here’s why it’s so great: Monica is an athletic girl — and not the perky cheerleader type, either — who not only gets the guy but gets the career, too. Quincy’s basketball career takes a backseat when Monica goes pro in the WNBA, and not the other way around. Talk about having it all.
Photo: ©Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection5/9She's All That
What’s a ‘90s rom-com without Freddie Prinze Jr. in a varsity jacket? Rachael Leigh Cook plays Laney, a loner art student who has better things to do than worry about the politics of prom. Popularity is all that mega-hottie Zack (Freddie Prinze Jr.) cares about, especially after his ex-girlfriend dumps him for an MTV reality star. He bets his friends that he can turn anyone in school into his prom queen, and they put their money on Laney. The movie is too cliché not to love and makes us believe that the best high school relationships come out of the woodwork between prom and graduation.
©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection6/9Drive Me Crazy
Another teen hit to come out of 1999, Drive Me Crazy has that childhood-neighbors-against-the-world scheming that fans of Paper Towns would recognize in a heartbeat. Melissa Joan Hart plays preppy and popular Nicole who, after her dream prom date chooses a cheerleader instead of her, enlists the help of scruffy and emo Chase (Adrian Grenier) to make him jealous. Chase has an ulterior motive, too — he wants to get back at his ex-girlfriend for dumping him. The duo pretend to date, and, yes, end up falling for each other. Drive Me Crazy taught us that the boys who are worth our time in high school don’t always hang out on the basketball court. Sometimes, they’re hiding in grungy coffee shops behind floppy bangs — and might just bear a resemblance to Adrian Grenier.
Photo: ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection7/9A Cinderella Story
The plot of this 2004 gem is a fairytale classic with a love-in-the-digital-age twist. Sam (Hilary Duff) is an overworked and underappreciated step-daughter whose online pen pal, Nomad, happens to be the most popular guy in school (Chad Michael Murray, swoon). When they’re about to reveal each other’s identities at a masked Halloween dance, midnight strikes and Cinderella Sam runs off to meet her curfew. Her lost cell phone takes the place of a glass slipper, but what really gets us is that Sam is the ultimate smart girl. She has Princeton in her post-high school plans, and as it turns out, so does Nomad.
©MCA/Courtesy Everett Collection8/9Sixteen Candles
Of all the movies in the John Hughes-Molly Ringwald canon, Sixteen Candles does great things for the typical teenage girl fantasy of falling in love with the cute upperclassman. Angsty Samantha is madly in love with popular and brooding Jake (Michael Schoeffling), who doesn’t know she exists...or so she thinks. Even hot boys are shy and insecure, but Jake finally gets the guts to ask Sam out. He does it in the most romantic way possible when he shows up to her sister’s wedding and whisks her off to celebrate her 16 birthday. Make a wish indeed.
