MRQE Ranks: The Best to Worst '90s Teen Movies

1

Titanic (1997)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher

Director: James Cameron

Synopsis: This spectacular epic re-creates the ill-fated maiden voyage of the White Star Line's $7.5 million R.M.S Titanic and the tragic sea disaster of Apr... [MORE]

2

Boyz n the Hood (1991)

Cast: Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding Jr., Morris Chestnut, Larry Fishburne, Nia Long

Director: John Singleton

Synopsis: Director John Singleton's debut chronicles the trials and tribulations of three young African-American males growing up in South Central Los Angele... [MORE]

3

Rushmore (1998)

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Brian Cox, Seymour Cassel

Director: Wes Anderson

Synopsis: After the highly acclaimed independent film Bottle Rocket, director Wes Anderson followed up with a quirky Touchstone Studios film entitled Rushmor... [MORE]

4

Election (1999)

Cast: Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, Colleen Camp

Director: Alexander Payne

Synopsis: In this satirical comedy, a hotly contested high school election becomes a metaphor for the current state of American politics. Jim McAllister (Mat... [MORE]

5

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Cast: Jason London, Rory Cochrane, Sasha Jenson, Wiley Wiggins, Milla Jovovich

Director: Richard Linklater

Synopsis: Like George Lucas' American Graffiti, Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused is an affectionate look at the youth culture of a bygone era. While L... [MORE]

6

Scream (1996)

Cast: Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, David Arquette, Courteney Cox

Director: Wes Craven

Synopsis: Scream is at once a slasher film and a tongue-in-cheek position paper on the "dead teenagers" movies of the late 1970s/early 1980s that plays as ha... [MORE]

7

All Over Me (1997)

Cast: Alison Folland, Tara Subkoff, Wilson Cruz, Cole Hauser, Pat Briggs

Director: Alex Sichel

Synopsis: A teenage lesbian comes-of-age in this drama. Claude (Alison Folland) is a raw-boned girl graduating from high school. She spends all the time she ... [MORE]

8

Wayne's World (1992)

Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere, Brian Doyle-Murray

Director: Penelope Spheeris

Writer: Mike Myers

Synopsis: Based on the Saturday Night Live sketch of the same name, Wayne's World is a wacky, irreverent pop-culture comedy about the adventures of two amiab... [MORE]

9

Clueless (1995)

Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Dan Hedaya

Director: Amy Heckerling

Synopsis: Jane Austen might never have imagined that her 1816 novel Emma could be turned into a fresh and satirical look at ultra-rich teenagers in a Beverly... [MORE]

10

American Pie (1999)

Cast: Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Alyson Hannigan, Shannon Elizabeth, Chris Klein

Director: Paul Weitz

Synopsis: It's said that most American men think about sex once every two or three minutes, but this statistic would seriously underestimate the horniness of... [MORE]

11

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Brian Dennehy, John Leguizamo, Pete Postlethwaite

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Synopsis: The classic Shakespearean romantic tragedy is updated by director Baz Luhrmann to a post-modern Verona Beach where swords are merely a brand of gun... [MORE]

12

Kids (1995)

Cast: Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce, Chloe Sevigny, Sarah Henderson, Rosario Dawson

Director: Larry Clark

Synopsis: Kids offers a bleak, unblinking view of a group of vacuous, thoughtless New York City teens in their ceaseless quest for sex, drugs, and trouble. T... [MORE]

13

Cry-Baby (1990)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, Susan Tyrrell, Polly Bergen, Iggy Pop

Director: John Waters

Synopsis: John Waters does a quirky spin on '50s nostalgia in Cry-Baby, his musical homage to Rebel Without a Cause and +Romeo and Juliet. Set in Baltimore i... [MORE]

14

Powder (1995)

Cast: Sean Patrick Flanery, Mary Steenburgen, Lance Henriksen, Jeff Goldblum

Director: Victor Salva

Synopsis: This unusual modern-day fable concerns a super-powered teenager who inspires nothing but hostility in the small-minded folk of his hometown. Sean P... [MORE]

15

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Cast: Larisa Oleynik, Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Andrew Keegan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Director: Gil Junger

Synopsis: As Shakespearean adaptations go, it's not quite as odd as moving +The Tempest to another planet (as in Forbidden Planet) or +Hamlet to a Canadian b... [MORE]

16

Mallrats (1995)

Cast: Shannen Doherty, Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani, Michael Rooker

Director: Kevin Smith

Synopsis: Kevin Smith's follow-up to his unexpected hit Clerks details the pointless story of T.S. (Jeremy London) and Brodie (Jason Lee), two suburban New J... [MORE]

17

Dick (1999)

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Michelle Williams, Dan Hedaya, Jim Breuer, Teri Garr

Director: Andrew Fleming

Synopsis: The mystery of the 18-minute-gap in Richard Nixon's White House tapes -- and how it connects to the previously undocumented involvement of two teen... [MORE]

18

Blast from the Past (1999)

Cast: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley

Director: Hugh Wilson

Synopsis: In 1962, Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) was a brilliant but somewhat paranoid scientist living with his Donna Reed-esque wife, Helen (Sissy Spa... [MORE]

19

The Faculty (1998)

Cast: Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Synopsis: Miramax Films darlings Robert Rodriguez and screenwriter Kevin Williamson teamed up for a high-school alien-horror film that they described as The ... [MORE]

20

The Craft (1996)

Cast: Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, Rachel True, Skeet Ulrich

Director: Andrew Fleming

Synopsis: After killing her mother in childbirth, growing up in San Francisco with her father and stepmother, attempting suicide, and moving to Los Angeles, ... [MORE]

21

SubUrbia (1996)

Cast: Jayce Bartok, Giovanni Ribisi, Nicky Katt, Steve Zahn, Ajay Naidu

Director: Richard Linklater

Synopsis: Director Richard Linklater and writer/actor Eric Bogosian collaborated on this adaptation of Bogosian's play about a handful of people edging into ... [MORE]

22

Can't Hardly Wait (1998)

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ethan Embry, Seth Green, Lauren Ambrose, Charlie Korsmo

Director: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan

Synopsis: After the Huntington Hills High graduation ceremony, the fun gets underway at the graduation party where an assortment of jocks, geeks, prom queens... [MORE]

23

Outside Providence (1999)

Cast: Shawn Hatosy, Jon Abrahams, Alec Baldwin, George Wendt, Tommy Bone

Director: Michael Corrente

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Peter Farrelly, published in 1988 before he became famous as a writer and director of such films as Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, a... [MORE]

24

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair, Louise Fletcher

Director: Roger Kumble

Writer: Roger Kumble

Synopsis: In an adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phil... [MORE]

25

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, Kirstie Alley, Allison Janney, Denise Richards

Director: Michael Patrick Jann

Synopsis: So how far would you go to win a beauty pageant? That's the burning question of Drop Dead Gorgeous, in which the citizens of Mount Rose, Minnesota ... [MORE]

26

The Basketball Diaries (1995)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco, Bruno Kirby, Ernie Hudson, Patrick McGaw

Director: Scott Kalvert

Synopsis: Very loosely based on the memoir of the same name, The Basketball Diaries transposes the late '60s adolescence of writer/artist Jim Carroll to some... [MORE]

27

Gummo (1997)

Cast: Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, Darby Dougherty, Chloe Sevigny

Director: Harmony Korine

Synopsis: In this elliptical ensemble piece, which marks the directorial debut of indie bad boy Harmony Korine, the teens of tornado-scarred Xenia, OH, kill ... [MORE]

28

Never Been Kissed (1999)

Cast: Drew Barrymore, Michael Vartan, Molly Shannon, David Arquette, Leelee Sobieski

Director: Raja Gosnell

Synopsis: Many people wish they could go back to high school, knowing what they know as an adult; Josie Geller gets the chance to do just that in the comedy ... [MORE]

29

She's All That (1999)

Cast: Freddie Prinze Jr., Rachael Leigh Cook, Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe

Director: Robert Iscove

Synopsis: If Hollywood can shoehorn William Shakespeare into the teen-movie treatment with Romeo and Juliet, and Jane Austen with Clueless (from her novel, E... [MORE]

30

Drive Me Crazy (1999)

Cast: Melissa Joan Hart, Adrian Grenier, Stephen Collins, Mark Metcalf, William Converse-Roberts

Director: John Schultz

Synopsis: Based on the novel, How I Created My Perfect Prom Date, by Todd Strasser, Drive Me Crazy stars Melissa Joan Hart as Nicole, a trend-conscious teena... [MORE]

31

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr., Muse Watson

Director: Jim Gillespie

Synopsis: During the annual July 4th festivities in a North Carolina fishing town, Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) wins a local beauty contest and departs with... [MORE]

32

Excess Baggage (1997)

Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Benicio Del Toro, Christopher Walken, Jack Thompson, Nicholas Turturro

Director: Marco Brambilla

Synopsis: In this combination caper comedy and offbeat romance, Emily (Alicia Silverstone) is a wealthy but petulant young woman desperate to get the attenti... [MORE]

33

Detroit Rock City (1999)

Cast: Edward Furlong, Giuseppe Andrews, James DeBello, Sam Huntington, Lin Shaye

Director: Adam Rifkin

Synopsis: Are you ready for the hottest band in the land? It's 1978 in Detroit, and pretty much any teenager who isn't a total wimp is totally stoked for the... [MORE]

34

Fear (1996)

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Petersen, Amy Brenneman, Alyssa Milano

Director: James Foley

Synopsis: Mark Wahlberg stars in one of his first features as a hoodlum drug dealer from the wrong side of the trackswho falls in love with Nicole Walker, an... [MORE]

35

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Cast: Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry

Director: Fran Rubel Kuzui

Synopsis: The idea of fusing teen sex-comedy and horror genres into a boffo box-office bonanza seems like classic braindead Hollywood-think... but somehow, b... [MORE]

36

Disturbing Behavior (1998)

Cast: Katie Holmes, James Marsden, Nick Stahl, Bruce Greenwood, William Sadler

Director: David Nutter

Synopsis: David Nutter made his directorial debut with this fantasy thriller, attempting a switch on The Stepford Wives premise. The Clark family moves from ... [MORE]

37

Urban Legend (1998)

Cast: Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, Jared Leto, Danielle Harris

Director: Jamie Blanks

Synopsis: Australian director Jamie Blanks helmed this teen horror film set at Pendleton University. Campus legend has it that 25 years earlier Pendleton was... [MORE]

38

Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)

Cast: Helen Mirren, Katie Holmes, Marisa Coughlan, Barry Watson, Jeffrey Tambor

Director: Kevin Williamson

Writer: Kevin Williamson

Synopsis: After the success of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and television's Dawson's Creek, screenwriter Kevin Williamson made his directorial d... [MORE]

39

Idle Hands (1999)

Cast: Devon Sawa, Seth Green, Elden Henson, Jessica Alba, Steve Van Wormer

Director: Rodman Flender

Synopsis: Teenage burnouts and post-modern slasher films are both raked over the satiric coals in the blood-soaked comedy Idle Hands. Anton (Devon Sawa) is a... [MORE]

40

Hackers (1995)

Cast: Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Laurence Mason

Director: Iain Softley

Synopsis: In this high-tech thriller, Dade Murphy (Jonny Lee Miller) has been fascinated with computers all his life; at the age of 11, he was able to break ... [MORE]

41

Jawbreaker (1999)

Cast: Rose McGowan, Rebecca Gayheart, Julie Benz, Judy Greer, Chad Christ

Director: Darren Stein

Writer: Darren Stein

Synopsis: At Ronald Reagan High School, the power elite clique consists of Courtney Shane (Rose McGowan), Julie Freeman (Rebecca Gayheart), Marcie Fox (Julie... [MORE]

42

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

Cast: Emily Bergl, Jason London, Amy Irving, Dylan Bruno, J. Smith-Cameron

Director: Katt Shea

Synopsis: The Rage: Carrie 2 is set in a small town high school, where the members of the football team set the social order. Emulating the "Spur Posse" from... [MORE]

43

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Brandy, Freddie Prinze Jr., Mekhi Phifer, Muse Watson

Director: Danny Cannon

Synopsis: I Know What You Did Last Summer was one of the two teenaged horror movies responsible for bringing the horror genre into the 90's (the other being ... [MORE]