10 Things That I Hate Most About Teen Movies

Coming soon to a theater near you: “John Hughes in Love.” And why not? After all, the man is the undeniable Bardfather of that most bankable of late-’90s genres, the ensemble teen movie. But whereas the auteur who brought us “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” in the ‘80s chose to tell fully developed stories about people who just happened to be not quite fully developed, the worm has now turned.

Today you can forget “the play”--the Cast is unquestionably the Thing.

All you have to do is herd together a few burbling heads from your various dens of immaturity (UPN, the WB, Aaron Spelling’s vestibule), have them pout to a paper-thin or timeworn premise, photograph well and market accordingly. Idle glands will follow.

Since that basic formula seems to be working well enough, creative narrative chances are taken about as often as the buses at Beverly Hills High.

Instead, “Scream” writer Kevin Williamson notwithstanding, there seems to be an industry-wide cheat sheet on the proper elements for building a serviceable teen-star vehicle.

Having bodysurfed through the latest wave of hormonal hokum, including the erratic but above-average current release that inspires this piece’s name, it is like, with whatever, that I now share with you the 10 Things I Hate About Teen Movies:

1. The Pesky Dialogue Stuff That Gets in the Way of the Soundtrack

There’s a story going around, possibly apocryphal, about a young MTV director who called “wrap” to the set and bragged to the crew that they had made the best rock video ever. Then a helpful studio executive turned away from a cell-phone call in which she was optioning the motion picture rights to a very hot breakfast cereal, and informed the young director that he had actually just shot a feature film. The point is, there’s more rock and less talk in a modern teen movie than there is in a comparable 83-minute chunk of Top 40 radio.

Seriously, rather than actually ask the young animatrons in the cast to convey an emotion, why not cue up a vaguely appropriate lyric? That way, if you play your cards right, you can squeeze out more than one soundtrack album.

Oddly enough, though, an abnormally high percentage of the song selections in contemporary “teen film” are songs made when, well, when today’s teens were being made. Yes, that’s right.

2. “Teen Music” That Was Big When the Directors, Producers and Executives Were Teens

Sure, these kooky kids today are “into” retro, but they don’t get their mail there, fer cryin’ out loud! If you were to stock a jukebox from the tunes in the recent teen fare “Never Been Kissed,” “Jawbreaker” and “Idle Hands,” you’d be knee-deep in vinyl from the likes of the Ramones, the Beach Boys and the Scorpions. For some bizarre reason, Barry Manilow is a punch line in these films more often than the Spice Girls. As a proud graduate of Conestoga High School’s class of ‘86, I can honestly say we weren’t cranking a lot of Electric Light Orchestra, the Guess Who or England Dan & John Ford Coley at our happening soirees.

3. The Amazing Retractable Parents

Evidently there must be some kind of mandatory Screen Actors Guild sabbatical program for the actors who play the juvenile leads’ parents. Show up for the beginning, so you can be established as loving but oppressive. Then scram to the islands for a seminar on “Truly Understanding Your Tempestuous Teen,” so that near the end, both you and your kid can admit that you’ve been wrong just in time for the serial killer to be caught or your little darling’s virginity to be lost. Or, ideally, both.

4. From High School to Decolletage

Because these projects depend on brand-name loyalty for the adolescent audience to come out on the opening weekend, the poster art generally consists of five or six disembodied teen-idol head shots floating around the title, with a very strategic half-torso bonus for one of the fairer leads. You can’t help but notice that Jennifer Love Hewitt’s party of two has crashed through, or that Rebecca Gayheart’s surname would be more anatomically accurate if changed to Cheerybosom.

5. High School Equals ‘Wild Kingdom’ With either a new kid slouching into town or another glorious academic annum starting (use either excuse), we ride shotgun on a masterful “National Geographic”-style Steadicam shot through the early-morning congregative habitat of the high school species--the parking lot. It is here that we learn that Jeeps (and coming soon, Range Rovers) contain rich, happy conformist kids who are mean, while the quirky, character-filled older autos (VW Bugs, classic Ford Mustangs and the standard art-department junker) provide transport for the real folks like us. 6. The Tragic Epidemic of ‘16-Year-Old, Self-Styled Studs Terkel Syndrome’

How else to account for the oddball omniscient-observer type who invariably latches onto the handsome but brooding new guy and summarily breaks down the entire post-pubescent food chain in a pithy diatribe that sounds like Dennis Miller Jr. scored the lead in “Our Town”? And the sassy sociological screed always ends with a phrase like, “Then there’s the guys like you and me, who’ve got as much hope of scoring with her as Zontar the Strange has of getting off Planet K. You do read the Zontar graphic novels, don’t you?”

7. The Eyes Wide Shut Phenomenon

For some reason, we are expected to believe that the social butterflies on display in teen movies have been wrapped in cocoons for the entirety of high school. Otherwise, how could you begin to explain the astonishing ratio of first-time encounters between students in the waning days of senior year?

Just once I’d love to hear the following exchange: “Mara, you probably don’t know me, but I’ve watched you from afar ever since junior high, and I always knew Matt was cheating on you and that you deserved something better and that you didn’t really want to be a cheerleader, you wanted to take art classes, well I’m guessing that part because I saw you doodle that one time and it was kinda good, but you felt too pressured because everybody always loved your older sister. So I love you. By the way, my name’s Tucker.”

Instead of crinkling her perfect brow, batting her eyes and melting, as is the standard practice, Mara would snort and respond: “Oh, really? Like I didn’t know that? What a mystery man you are, Tucker! You sat directly across from me in homeroom for all of junior year! There’s only 200 people in our class. And if you must know, Matt and I had an agreement. Later, dweeb.”

8. Cliques That Don’t Stick

After it’s been pounded into our heads how the different social groups don’t ever interact, there’s inevitably a massive party that resembles a U.N. mixer. Every major character and their entourages are in attendance, but they all take great pains to orbit around the offensive factions. As we all know, this type of ludicrous territorial choreography would never occur in nature. Unless you count office parties.

9. Musical Acts That Many Casinos Can’t Afford

Obviously, this is a pretty transparent way for some soundtrack “synergy,” but shoehorning a major act into your movie as the band at the high school dance kills any authenticity you might be shooting for. See, there’re a lot of really crappy bands in this world, and most of ‘em play high school gigs. We’ll let the Mighty, Mighty Bosstones’ appearance in “Clueless” slide, because that was at a Beverly Hills party and that movie smartly tweaked a lot of these cliches, but for all the rest of you--and you fictitious, idyllic, Midwestern, New England and Pacific Northwest prep schools know who you are, be forewarned from this day forth--if the kids in the caf are complaining about the quality of the sloppy joes, then Radiohead for homecoming is definitely out of the question, OK?

10. Meaningful Dialogue Coming After the Last Bell to Convey Urgency (ringing noise)

“I’ll explain this one in more depth later. At the pier, tonight. Midnight, OK? Gotta bolt.” (Writer dashes off.) Editor: “Wait, what are you talking about?” (Editor runs hand through hair worriedly.)