10 Things I Hate About You

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• Top 6 Teen Comedies of All Time

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• Mean Girls

  Mean Girls, released in 2004 and written by Tina Fey, adapted a nonfiction self-help book about female adolescent social dynamics into a fictional satirical comedy, and its depiction of high school clique hierarchies and social manipulation became one of the most widely referenced teen comedy narratives of the 2000s. The film's numerous quotable lines, including "That's so fitch" and "You can't sit with us," entered mainstream popular culture so thoroughly that October 3rd became an unofficial informal holiday, "Mean Girls Day," referencing a specific line of dialogue from the film. Fey's screenplay balanced genuinely sharp satirical commentary on teenage social cruelty with an accessible, mainstream comedic tone, and the film's blend of substantive social observation and broad comedy helped distinguish it from more purely farcical teen comedies of the era. Mean Girls' massive and sustained cultural afterlife, including a later Broadway musical adaptation and subsequent film adaptation of that musical, has made it one of the most culturally persistent teen comedies of the 2000s, with quotes and references remaining in active circulation decades after its original release.

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• Superbad

  Superbad, released in 2007 and written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg based partly on their own teenage friendship, follows two best friends attempting to buy alcohol for a party during their final days of high school before heading to separate colleges. The film's frank, profanity-heavy dialogue and its willingness to address teenage anxiety about sex, friendship, and impending separation with genuine emotional honesty beneath its raunchy comedic surface distinguished it from more broadly cartoonish teen sex comedies. Michael Cera and Jonah Hill's performances, along with Christopher Mintz-Plasse's breakout role as the socially awkward "McLovin," a character whose fake ID becomes a central comedic device, made Superbad one of the most quotable and influential teen comedies of the late 2000s. The film's emotional core — genuine anxiety about a lifelong friendship changing as its two protagonists head toward separate futures — gave Superbad's raunchy comedy a sincere underlying emotional foundation that helped it achieve lasting critical and audience affection beyond its immediate box-office success.

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• Clueless

  Clueless, released in 1995, loosely adapted Jane Austen's novel Emma into a contemporary Beverly Hills high school setting, following a wealthy, well-meaning but self-absorbed teenager who attempts to matchmake and improve her classmates' lives with mixed results. The film's distinctive slang, including "as if!" and "whatever," became widely adopted catchphrases in mainstream 1990s youth culture, and its fashion-forward wardrobe, particularly protagonist Cher's coordinated plaid outfits, significantly influenced mid-1990s teen fashion trends. Writer-director Amy Heckerling's decision to update Austen's 19th-century social satire into a contemporary Southern California setting, while preserving the original novel's core themes about privilege, social matchmaking, and self-awareness, demonstrated the story's surprising adaptability across radically different time periods and settings. Clueless's combination of genuine wit adapted from Austen's original satirical framework and its distinctly 1990s cultural specificity has made it one of the most enduringly beloved and frequently referenced teen comedies of that decade, and its influence on subsequent teen comedy filmmaking remains substantial.

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• Ferris Bueller's Day Off

  Ferris Bueller's Day Off, released in 1986 and written and directed by John Hughes, follows a charismatic high school senior who fakes illness to spend a day skipping school with his friends, and the film's title character's direct addresses to the camera gave audiences an unusually intimate, complicit relationship with its protagonist. Its extended sequence at Chicago's Art Institute, along with the film's broader use of real Chicago landmarks throughout Ferris's day of adventure, gave the movie a genuine sense of place that made the city itself feel like a significant supporting character in the story. The film's parade sequence, in which Ferris commandeers a float to lip-sync "Twist and Shout" in front of a massive crowd of extras, became one of the most celebrated and joyfully chaotic set pieces in 1980s comedy filmmaking. Ferris Bueller's Day Off's blend of genuine charm, its carefree celebration of youthful rebellion, and its distinctive fourth-wall-breaking narration established it as one of the defining teen comedies of the 1980s, and Hughes's broader body of teen films helped establish the genre's continued critical and commercial legitimacy.

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• Napoleon Dynamite

  Napoleon Dynamite, released in 2004, follows an awkward, socially isolated high schooler in small-town Idaho through a deliberately deadpan, almost plotless narrative built around a series of increasingly absurd but mundane everyday situations. The film's extremely low $400,000 production budget, combined with its unconventional, non-Hollywood pacing and its cast of largely non-professional or lesser-known actors, gave Napoleon Dynamite a distinctly independent film sensibility relative to more polished mainstream teen comedies. Its widely quoted dialogue and specific visual details — Napoleon's distinctive moon boots, his tater tots, and his cousin Kip's online romance — became deeply embedded in mid-2000s popular culture, generating an extensive base of catchphrases and merchandise disproportionate to the film's modest production scale. Napoleon Dynamite's combination of deliberately awkward, deadpan comedic timing and its embrace of genuinely uncool, small-town Idaho teenage life, rather than more glamorous coastal teen comedy settings, made it one of the most distinctive and unexpectedly influential independent teen comedies of the 2000s.

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More in Film & TV

• Hidden Figures

  "Hidden Figures" (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi, dramatizes the true story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three Black women mathematicians whose calculations at NASA were critical to the success of the early American space program, based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same name. The film brought significant mainstream public attention to the real contributions of Black women "computers" at NASA during the Space Race, a history that had received relatively little prior widespread recognition, and it prompted renewed public interest in and honors for the real Katherine Johnson, who was still alive at the time of the film's release. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe's central performances drew significant critical acclaim, and the film became a notable box office success, outperforming many contemporary awards-season dramas and demonstrating a substantial mainstream audience for historical stories centered on Black women. Hidden Figures's combination of its overdue mainstream spotlight on real, previously under-recognized NASA scientists and its strong central performances has made it one of the most culturally significant true-story films of its decade.

• 12 Years a Slave

  "12 Years a Slave" (2013), directed by Steve McQueen, dramatizes the true story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the antebellum South, based on Northup's own 1853 memoir of the same name. Chiwetel Ejiofor's lead performance and Lupita Nyong'o's supporting performance, in her film debut, both drew significant critical acclaim, with Nyong'o winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the film itself won the Academy Award for Best Picture. McQueen's unflinching, sustained visual approach to depicting the brutality of slavery, including several extended, unbroken takes of violence that the camera refuses to look away from, was widely credited with giving American slavery a more direct and confrontational cinematic treatment than most previous major studio films had attempted. 12 Years a Slave's combination of its direct grounding in Solomon Northup's own historical memoir and Steve McQueen's unflinching directorial approach has made it one of the most acclaimed and historically significant true-story films ever produced.

• Catch Me If You Can

  "Catch Me If You Can" (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, dramatizes the real early life of Frank Abagnale Jr., who successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer while forging millions of dollars in checks before being caught by an FBI agent, played by Tom Hanks. The film was based on Abagnale's own memoir, and the real Abagnale, who later became a longtime security consultant working with the FBI, served as a consultant on the production, giving the filmmakers direct access to the actual details and methods behind his real-life cons. The film's stylish, buoyant tone and 1960s period production design, paired with John Williams's jazz-inflected score, gave the true story a lighter, more playful cinematic register than many other crime-based true stories, emphasizing the audacious cleverness of Abagnale's real schemes over their consequences. Catch Me If You Can's combination of its direct access to the real Frank Abagnale's own account and its stylish period filmmaking has made it one of the most purely entertaining true-story films ever produced.

• Erin Brockovich

  "Erin Brockovich" (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Julia Roberts, dramatizes the true story of the real Erin Brockovich, an unemployed single mother who, working as a legal clerk, helped build a massive lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric over water contamination in Hinkley, California. Roberts's performance won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and her portrayal of the real Brockovich's brash, persistent determination in the face of both corporate stonewalling and professional condescension became one of the most acclaimed performances of her career. The real underlying case resulted in a $333 million settlement, at the time the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history, and the real Erin Brockovich served as a consultant on the film and appeared in a small cameo role. Erin Brockovich's combination of Julia Roberts's Oscar-winning lead performance and its grounding in one of the largest environmental settlements in American legal history has made it one of the most acclaimed true-story legal dramas ever produced.

• The Social Network

  "The Social Network" (2010), directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, dramatizes the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University and the subsequent legal disputes with his co-founders and the Winklevoss twins over credit and ownership of the company. Sorkin's screenplay, built around competing depositions and conflicting accounts of the same events, embraced the genuine ambiguity of the real underlying legal disputes rather than presenting a single definitive version of what happened, a structural choice widely praised by critics as an unusually sophisticated approach to dramatizing contested recent history. Jesse Eisenberg's performance as a fictionalized version of Zuckerberg drew significant critical acclaim, and the film's release while the real Facebook was still a relatively young and rapidly growing company gave it an unusually immediate, real-time quality rare for a historical biopic. The Social Network's combination of its sophisticated multi-perspective legal-dispute structure and its unusually immediate proximity to still-unfolding real events has made it one of the most critically acclaimed true-story films of the 21st century.