90’s Romantic Comedies Include Unexpected Life Lessons

I like to think I’m not a vapid, sappy teenage girl. But hey, everyone has their gap in judgement, and mine just happens to be sappy rom-coms from the life and times of late 1990s high schoolers. Take me back to simpler times, with angsty teenagers trying to find love, but lack technology—with the exception of Cher and her super computer. With boys sporting “Dawson’s Creek” haircuts listening to the Top 40s from 20 years ago on their Walkman. Take me back, and I am unabashedly, inexplicably happy.

Maybe you don’t know what movies I’m talking about: “Clueless,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” “She’s All That,” “Never Been Kissed.” Get the picture here?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Miranda, just move back 10 years. An obsession with 1980’s rom-coms is not nearly as embarrassing. “The Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles;” John Hughes and Molly Ringwald were undoubtedly a hard act to follow.

But consider this: how many times can you watch Drew Barrymore wait on that baseball field for her first love? Or Heath Ledger serenade Julia Stiles on the bleachers of Padua High School? Or Alicia Silverstone whine out, “As if!” to her band of wannabe followers?

The answer is an infinite amount of times. Well, at least for me it is.

Normally I like to think I have good taste in movies. I like to think that I’m more of the type of girl that would run out to see the new Wes Anderson or Spike Jonze movie rather than the new Katherine Heigl monstrosity. My love for 90s and all its movies comes in bursts. Without warning I find myself sitting on my couch with a bowl of popcorn in front of me, marathoning every mushy movie made between the years of 1995 and 1999, without the slightest clue as to how I got there. Or who made the popcorn.

But there’s a part of me that really does not care. Because in their own way, 90s rom-coms really are decent movies. And let me tell you why.

Being a high school student is a funny thing. At least in when it comes to 90s teeny-boppers, it gives you a very nice perspective, because — and I think everyone in the “Glee”-era can agree — no one can ever quite portray high school correctly. And in the case of the late 90s, I guarantee you, the absurdity follows a strict set of guidelines:

The popular boy makes a bet with his friends to get with a specific girl chosen especially for him. He pursues the girl, and she begins to trust him, but everything goes horribly wrong at the school dance/party they attend together. If he’s the good guy, the boy makes a grand gesture to win the girl back; if not, the boy gets punched in the face before the nice guy comes in and sweeps the girl off her feet. The end.

It’s routinely hyperbolic. In its own way, it’s comforting and always funny. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all of my movie watching: Makeovers. Change. Everything.

Plus, there’s that one girl who always just gets it. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a true version of her in real life. Just pieces of her. She’s had some sort of existential crisis, usually due to the fact that her mother is not around for whatever reason, and has come down with a nasty case of “who am I?” High school, am I right? I love that girl. I feel like we’re kindred spirits. I, too, enjoy listening to angry-girl music while reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Julia Stiles, you just get me.

In all seriousness, one of the great things about these movies are the women. Romantic comedies are getting worse and worse these days, and do you know why? Because the women have stopped standing up for themselves. Welcome to the age where romantic comedies are marketed to a modern, male-dominated society. Where the comedy in romantic-comedy is lazy, raunchy and downright misogynistic.

Nineties men, however, deserve a shout-out for all the wonderful things they do. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, no one pulls off the awkward phase of hormone-impaired adolescence like you do. Paul Rudd, your smile makes the weird, creepy and socially incestuous relationship with your teenage step-sister moderately less disturbing. Michael Vartan, you win the game of life with your face and your ability to speak fluent French. Freddie Prinze Jr…good effort, kid.

Can we also acknowledge the high level of intelligence that is standard in these 90s teenage heart-throb movies? I mean, while they are “Just Another High School Movie” and all that, they’re also insightful caricatures; two of them are modernizations of a classic novel/play: think “Clueless” as Jane Austen’s “Emma”; “10 Things I Hate About You” as William Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”. That’s got to count for something right?

Substance, people, is all I ask of my movies. And though it’s not delivered in maybe the most sophisticated of manners, I deny the idea that my 90s rom-coms are vapid and shallow. Sappy, however, is unavoidable in this case.

So feel free to judge me all you want. Do you think that will make me stop watching? Ugh, as if!

Click here to view a 50 Lancers, One Question video about students’ favorite 90s movies.