Hmm. What they have in common, though, is that they aren't high school movies. No Cusack, no Hughes. I really do think the high school movie's time has come and gone. Maybe I'm being narrow-minded, but I just don't see Hollywood breaking away from the American Pie framework anytime soon.Ebert interviewed Scorsese once and they both agreed that anyone that says I don't like movies about __ are idiots.
Obviously, yeah. But ... my problem is people just make the typical high school movie. It's awful. I do tend to forget (which is a good thing, because it means I was focused on plot and other stuff) that Donnie Darko is a high school movie, sort of. So is 21 Jump Street. Etc.
American Pie is essentially a recent version of the Porky's franchise. These movies have been around for many years and will be around for many more. It's not the setting, it's the character arc. Rebel Without a Cause, Dead Poets Society, Rushmore, Napolean Dynamite, and nearly all John Hughes Films are all "high school movies". There will be many, many more that are interesting because the story is interesting. Saying "high school movies time has come and gone" is literally like saying "movies about the workplace" have come and gone.
movies about the workplace have come and gone. who can top Haiku Tunnel?
When I say "high school movies," I basically mean '80s high school movies. I honestly don't think you can make a Ferris Bueller or a Sixteen Candles today "unironically" -- or what have you. (Ironic is in, on the other hand -- see Superbad, Napoleon Dynamite, 21 Jump Street, Clueless.) High school as a setting isn't going away ever, though I wish we all could at least take a sabbatical in order to come up with some original plots. Transformers was sort of set in high school, at least the first one was. And so on. But high school as a memetic (keep in mind I originally mentioned the high school trope, not the high school movie; different animals -- realistically I know it won't vanish but I don't think we'll ever see the Porky's style again per se.
Garden State was basically Ferris Beuller's Day Off done for millenials. When you say "the high school trope" you're basically talking about "coming of age romances" which are not going to go away. I would argue that Boy's Town was as much a part of "the high school trope" as Breakfast Club and it was long enough ago that Mickey Rooney played a 15-year-old. You want original plots? Go watch Brick. Report back for science.
Yeah, I've seen Brick. Falls into the movies set around high school but not "high school movies" (coming of age romances, sure) category. It seems to me that what's largely replaced the sort of movie you mention is the mid-twenties rom-com, the Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston/Ashton Kutcher stuff. My main problem with arguing this is that I watch good movies almost exclusively. So my data set is incomplete.