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High School Movie Review Five high school movies graded on whether or not they accurately depict high school Rae Zimmerli
editor-in-chief
“Mean Girls” follows Cady Heron as she struggles to navigate moving to a new school. She initially befriends two outcasts. Cady then uses her new girl status to infiltrate the circle of popular girls to take them down on the outcasts’ behalf. The events that follow are grandiose and blown way out of proportion, however, that creates a more realistic high school feeling. For example, Cady once envisions that high school resembles a zoo and all of the girls are animals who are fighting each other. This scene reflects the ru-
mors and drama that are present in high school and illustrates this in a comical way. The teenage stereotypes hit at just the right level as to not be offensive to teenage viewers and still be funny for all audiences. When things go wrong, it does feel like the end of the world in high school and “Mean Girls” can poke fun at that perception while still accurately representing what high school life looks and feels like.
Grade: “High School Musical” follows star basketball player, Troy Bolton, and genius new student, Gabriella Montez as they fall in love with each other. Both of them are interested in playing the leads in the next school musical, but between Troy’s basketball practices and Gabriella’s Scholastic Decathlon meetings, they struggle to do both activities. Obviously, breaking into song during school doesn’t create a realistic high school atmosphere but the struggle to do more than one activity in
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high school will hit close to home for many students. “High School Musical” also features a theatre teacher with an obsessive phone hatred, which goes to show that nothing much has changed in regards to phones in the classroom since 2006. While this movie may not perfectly represent the school environment, as children, it was still nice to believe that high school would be filled with singing, dancing and Zac Efron.
Grade:
B+
