Teen movies have been an essential part of a healthy cinematic diet for decades. From Rebel Without a Cause and The Blackboard Jungle in the '50s, to the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello beach pictures of the '60s, to Grease and American Graffiti in the '70s, to the John Hughes comedies of the '80s, teen movies have always played an important role. They give young audiences a sense that someone understands their generation's particular concerns. They make great date nights, too.
The 1990s produced their fair share of popular teen flicks -- Can't Hardly Wait, American Pie, and Dazed and Confused chief among them. It was a rocky period for movies of this type, though. Those John Hughes works, specifically The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, set the bar so high that a lot of '90s teen movies struggled to capture that same level of insight. As a result, the decade produced at least as many misfires as successes.
With that in mind, we've assembled 25 teen movies from the 1990s that tried, and failed, to tap into what adolescents of the era wanted to see reflected onscreen. There are no obscure titles here, no tiny indie releases that only played in a few theaters. Each of these films was given a nationwide release, bolstered by a substantial advertising campaign. If you were old enough to go to the movies, you were certainly aware of their existence. In every case, they wanted to hit the bullseye with the target demographic, only to come up short.
Here are 25 Forgettable ’90s Teen Movies Only Superfans .
Return to the Blue Lagoon
In 1980, The Blue Lagoon made Brooke Shields a star. For some unknown reason, it took eleven years for Hollywood to make a sequel to that box office smash.
Return to the Blue Lagoon has the exact same premise -- two adolescents get stranded on a desert island, where they begin to experience the power of love and engage in certain mature activities. The primary difference is that the lead actress is the pre-Resident Evil Milla Jovovich.
Sporting an unimpressive 0% at Rotten Tomatoes, the movie offers more of the same, but to much lesser effect.
Camp Nowhere
In the '90s, Disney had a division called Hollywood Pictures, whose logo was a sphinx. It turned out so many bad movies that a popular joke among rival studios was, "If it's the sphinx, it stinks."
Camp Nowhere is a perfect example of why that joke existed.
Christopher Lloyd stars in this dopey comedy as an irresponsible drama teacher who helps a group of kids start their own summer camp, where the entire concept of "rules" quickly goes out the window. There have been some good camp comedies, but Camp Nowhere has no wit, just a lot of lame slapstick humor -- and a very young Jessica Alba in a small role.
The Basketball Diaries
Jim Carroll's memoir The Basketball Diaries is a harrowing tale of how the author, as a high school basketball star, developed a hardcore substance abuse problem that nearly destroyed him.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Carroll in the film adaptation.
Despite giving a performance that largely received critical acclaim, DiCaprio couldn't save the movie from harsh reviews.
A common refrain was that it felt like the picture was inadvertently sensationalizing addiction rather than depicting it realistically. The main character's ultimate redemption was also accused of being unconvincing.
As for audiences, they sensed The Basketball Diaries was a downer and stayed away.
Pump Up the Volume
Pump Up the Volume stars Christian Slater as a teenager who uses his pirate radio station to rail against the authority figures in his town and at his high school. Samantha Mathis co-stars as the fellow student who figures out his secret identity.
The movie actually has a worthwhile message about the power of finding your voice, yet that message is buried beneath moments of extreme melodrama. Slater also received criticism for doing what appears to be a full-on Jack Nicholson imitation throughout.
It's safe to say that Pump Up the Volume hasn't aged well.
The idea of creating a pirate radio station is obsolete in this day of social media and podcasting.
Toy Soldiers
Toy Soldiers is kind of a ripoff of Red Dawn, which may have been part of the reason why it never made much of an impact. The story takes place at an elite prep school. When criminals overtake the academic establishment, it's up to a gang of feisty students to fight back.
The producers thought the cast of rising young actors, including Sean Astin and Wil Wheaton, would carry it to box office success. Unfortunately, scenes that were supposed to be exciting come off rather silly, as Toy Soldiers fails to convince us that these teens are really capable of foiling hardcore criminal lowlifes.
Drive Me Crazy
After achieving tremendous success on television with Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Melissa Joan Hart was eager to prove she had the right stuff to make it on movie screens, as well. Her cinematic debut as a leading lady was Drive Me Crazy.
Hart plays a heartbroken teenager whose dream guy fails to ask her to the prom.
She then enlists offbeat neighbor, played Adrian Grenier, to take her instead. He agrees, in order to make his ex-girlfriend jealous. Sparks unexpectedly fly between them.
Drive Me Crazy doesn't have the most original plot, and it says nothing new about adolescent romance. No wonder it made a speedy in-and-out from cinemas.
Cool as Ice
Vanilla Ice was briefly a big deal in the early '90s thanks to his ubiquitous hit song "Ice Ice Baby". He was so big, in fact, that Universal Pictures crafted a movie called Cool as Ice around him.
He plays a motorcycle-riding rapper romancing a girl whose family is in the Witness Protection Program. When corrupt cops track them down, he tries to save her.
Cool as Ice suffered some unexpected bad luck. It takes a while to make a movie, and Vanilla Ice was largely a flash in the pan. By the time the film limped into theaters, his career was already on a downslide.
The Faculty
On paper, The Faculty seemed like a can't-miss proposition. Director Robert Rodriguez was hot off El Mariachi and From Dusk Till Dawn, while writer Kevin Williamson was the toast of Hollywood, thanks to his script for Scream.
The film had an impressive cast, including Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Salma Hayek, and Jordana Brewster.
The issue was the plot, which involves a group of high school students who come to believe their teachers are aliens. The Faculty doesn't capitalize on the full potential of that premise, which led to middling reviews and so-so box office.
All I Wanna Do
All I Wanna Do is a good movie with a 67% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately, some behind-the-scenes issues have kept it from gaining the attention many people feel it deserves.
The film has had multiple titles and multiple releases.
It was filmed under the name The Hairy Bird, but was minimally released twice in North America in 1997 as Strike! and once again in 2000 as All I Wanna Do.
Inconsistent titling and a bizarre release pattern caused this coming-of-age story that features Kirsten Dunst, Gaby Hoffmann, and Rachael Leigh Cook to fall between the cracks.
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Baby-Sitters Club is based on the wildly popular book series by Ann M. Martin. It focuses a group of teen girls who attempt to earn some money by opening up their own daycare camp for children. Along the way, they endure personal dramas, ranging from diabetes to estranged fathers.
Despite the popularity of the novels, the movie couldn't muster up much business. A common criticism was that there were too many characters, meaning that it was difficult to give each of them their full due in 94 minutes.
It's also possible that the fan base was simply too busy reading the books to bother with the film adaptation.
