My Thoughts On Teen Movies
September 30, 2001
I'm not really into teen movies. (Okay, so a lot of 20-year-olds aren't, but I wasn't into teen movies when I *was* a teenager.) In fact, when a friend tries to talk me into watching one I haven't seen, I wonder how pathetic it's going to be.
Teen movies are all so much alike it can be pretty sickening. (Yes, it's true that Hollywood likes to recycle the same old stories, especially when the same old stories make money the same way. But I digress...) The protagonists are always gorgeous and always get what they want in the end. The antagonistic characters always get some kind of punishment. Everyone has a perfectly-put-together wardrobe, a car most real teens can't afford, one quirky friend, a jam-packed social life, and either no brain or a vocabulary only someone in a Woody Allen movie would put to use. Guys learn how to get the pretty girl, and maybe have some athletic triumph. Girls learn that if they get cooler clothes and try wearing makeup and act cooler than they really think they are that suddenly everything they want will magically fall into place. I'm sooooooo sorry, but it just doesn't happen that way. A movie showing a girl tapping into her own abilities, what she *already* has, would be *much* more believable, and much more significant. However, that won't sell because so many girls out there just want Cinderella stories, in which the female lead doesn't have to do anything requiring any actual display of brain power.
I don't think I need to explain how the plots of teen movies are either pointless or preposterous. I would, however, like to pose the question of just who the hell cares about fickle ditzoids with nothing constructive to do?
I guess I don't like those movies for the simple reason that with most of them, I see nothing I can relate to and nothing I find entertaining.
Some teen movies that don't suck:
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