Despite having some politically incorrect humor and outdated pop culture references, The Breakfast Club remains one of the quintessential teen comedies. Its writer and director, John Hughes, pioneered the genre with films like Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink.

The Breakfast Club takes a bunch of stock characters from other high school movies – the jock who hates his dad, the nerd who feels like an outcast, the popular girl with more personality and depth than meets the eye etc. – and put them all in a weekend detention together, where they realized they’re not so different. So, here are 10 Teen Comedies To Watch If You Like The Breakfast Club.

10 Say Anything…

Every lovesick teenage boy who ever stood out in his crush’s yard and held a boombox over his head owes a debt to this John Cusack-starring romantic comedy vehicle. Cusack stars as Lloyd Dobler, a regular underachieving slacker, alongside Ione Skye as Diane Court, his love interest, the class valedictorian.

Entertainment Weekly has named Say Anything… the greatest modern romance movie, and said romance picks up right after the characters have graduated from high school. It’s a time that we all remember, with a combination of feeling like the sky’s the limit and also feeling daunted by your unknowable future.

9 Booksmart

The directorial debut of Olivia Wilde, Booksmart is a fun, insightful coming-of-age comedy in which the central thesis is: high school is war. Although Wilde’s direction keeps the movie sharp and focused, the real highlight of Booksmart is the chemistry shared by stars Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein.

They might not be best friends in real life, but they played best friends convincingly, so it’s clear that they at least got along on the set of the movie. They play a pair of high schoolers who, after years of knuckling down with their studies to secure a bright future, decide to let loose and have some fun.

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8 10 Things I Hate About You

Astonishingly, fans were upset when Heath Ledger was cast to play the Joker in The Dark Knight. At the time, the actor was known as a teen heartthrob from movies like 10 Things I Hate About You, so a lot of moviegoers didn’t think he could pull off the role of the Joker.

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But the fact that he won an Oscar for playing a sadistic clown and also starred in this romantic teen comedy is a testament to his immense talents as an actor. 10 Things I Hate About You stars Ledger alongside Julia Stiles and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a modern-day retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

7 Clueless

“As if!” Alicia Silverstone starred as the generation-capturing icon Cher Horowitz in Amy Heckerling’s modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel Emma. Paul Rudd also makes an early-career appearance as Cher’s new stepbrother that she starts to have romantic feelings for (it’s based on a pretty weird book – at least they’re not related by blood).

For Rudd, the successes of both this movie and Friends combined to give way to his storied career. Silverstone nails every scene, from Cher’s ill-fated driving test to her attempts to sound cultured to her crush. Clueless is one of the most ‘90s movies ever made, so if you’re nostalgic for that era, you’ll love it.

6 Accepted

Some kids try really hard throughout their high school career and get good grades and have no problem getting accepted by one of their top college picks. Then, there are the other kids. There are the kids who don’t pay attention, coast through all their classes, and then struggle to get into college.

Accepted is a movie about those kids. Justin Long stars as a high schooler who gets rejected by every college he applied for. Not wanting to disappoint his dad, he invents his own college. There’s also a hysterical early-career turn by Jonah Hill as Long’s high school buddy who gets into a prestigious university and gets hazed by a fraternity.

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5 Juno

Inspired by screenwriter Diablo Cody’s own experiences, Juno stars Ellen Page and Michael Cera as a pair of teenage lovers who accidentally conceive a baby. Throughout the movie, the titular heroine tries to figure out what she’s going to do.

She wants to give the baby up for adoption, so she meets with a couple (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) that can’t have their own child and really want to start a family – or so it seems – but then, she finds herself becoming surprisingly attached to the baby. It’s a beautiful movie that will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.

4 Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Cameron Crowe spent some time undercover as a high school student in order to write the non-fiction book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story about his experiences. Then, when the book was a hit and Hollywood saw its potential for adaptation, Crowe was hired to turn that book into the screenplay for a high school comedy.

It doesn’t so much follow a plot as a tone. It’s a series of vignettes revolving around the same group of high school students, unrestrained by a premise or theme. Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a cinematic snapshot of high school life.

3 Superbad

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg started writing Superbad when they were 13 years old. They’ve since joked that it’s the only movie about virgins in high school trying to get laid that was written by actual virgins in high school trying to get laid.

Across dozens of drafts, continuing to work on the script well into their twenties – along with a little help from their mentor and producer Judd Apatow – Rogen and Goldberg shaped a script that was funny, heartfelt, and tightly structured. Superbad stars the perfectly matched Jonah Hill and Michael Cera as two guys at the end of their high school careers who finally get invited to a cool party.

2 Mean Girls

Tina Fey adapted the screenplay for this hilarious high school comedy from a non-fiction book called Queen Bees and Wannabes. The book was all about the social hierarchies in high schools, so Fey constructed a story in which an outsider, Cady, played by Lindsay Lohan at the height of her powers, arrives at an American high school for the first time and observes her classmates’ unusual behavior.

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She grew up on the plains of Africa with her parents, studying African wildlife. She begins to notice some hysterical and strangely insightful parallels between life in high school and life in the animal kingdom.

1 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Written and directed by The Breakfast Club’s John Hughes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is the definitive cinematic snapshot of the youthful feeling of being young and free, living in a world filled with endless possibilities.

With the simplistic setup of a cool high school kid (played hilariously by Matthew Broderick in a career-defining turn) taking the day off to see Chicago with his girlfriend and his best pal, Hughes used this movie to impart all kinds of wisdom and life lessons, including (but not limited to), “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.”

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About The Author


Ben Sherlock
(3458 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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