Election

Election is the best movie about high school I have ever seen. It took me two time watching it and 5+ white Russians to come to this conclusion, but it is true. Everything about it is wonderful. Even the lighting makes it look like hight school in the best and worst ways.

If you watch a movie about high school, it will most likely be what is dubbed a "teen movie," which is no doubt a piece of crap. It will probably try to reflect stereotypical cliques of students and then show some nerdy girl/guy who it turns out is wonderful. Elecetion is great because it shows you characters who do what they should do given their circumstances, who then end up filling certain almost stereotypical roles, instead of assigning stereotypical roles to characters and then giving you nothing else. It's a fantastic movie.

Each character has a nice story behind it, the repressed lesbian who doesn't know she's a lesbian, the overachiever who's really just trying to impress her repressed single mother, the genuinely good guy who is forced into the role of popular guy because he is genuinely likable. That is the thing that most high school movies forget. High schoolers aren't inherently stupid, they are just big kids trying to fit the roles that they see presented for them. Sure, they look dumb, but so would you (and did you) when you didn't know anything about the world. Just watch this movie, and listen to HOW the characters talk. It is beautiful and ugly and perfect.