I’m not saying teens shouldn’t have sex. Well, yes, that’s fine, but we shouldn’t be talking about it. We all know it does, but only the most hypocritical Christian would be offended by it. Others are fine with it, we make the whole movie industry about it. But we never talk about it. When you talk about teenage sex, people see you as some kind of sex offender. Never talk about how many high school kids are pussy obsessed. But please tell me how obsessed college students are with pussies. This is a topic I love to hear about, please tell me more. How many pussies will this college student smash? I think it should be a lot. I want to meet the college student who destroyed the legendary Goddess Puss.
#10 National Lampoon’s Animal House
Animal House isn’t really a teenage sex comedy because most of these people are in college, but there is a teenage girl in there somewhere and she seems to be doing fine. She’s got parties, concerts, graduation and two little goats she keeps at Delta House, so she’s far too busy for any of this teenage-sex nonsense. Good for her. Meanwhile, everybody else at Faber College is drinking, screaming, destroying property and wearing bedsheets because somebody discovered that you can call a bedsheet a toga and suddenly public drunkenness becomes ancient Roman culture. Put on a toga. Drink a beer. Fall through a table. Die of alcohol poisoning. COLLEGE!
Animal House is vulgar, disgusting, stupid and sometimes just about shit, which is exactly why it works. There has never been a university like Faber College because real universities have accreditation requirements. Faber appears to have been founded sometime in the nineteenth century by the King of Pens, who established the school’s famous motto: “Education is good.” Profound. In another sense, Faber College represents our entire society. What sense is that? I don’t fucking know. Someone smarter can write that article. I’m still waiting for scientists to explain how Brutus can smash a beer bottle against his own forehead without immediately going to the hospital. That’s the real education happening at Faber.
#9 Staten Island Summer
Looking for a modern young-adult sex comedy where everybody is at least theoretically supposed to be coming of age? Staten Island Summer is the movie for you. Produced by legendary filmmaker Porn Michaels, it contains every ingredient required by law: friendship, graduation, a hot new girl, a horror story, swimming pools and approximately forty-seven celebrity cameos from all over the world. The young characters spend their final summer working at a pool, getting high and participating in increasingly elaborate stone-her shenanigans, including one incident where they become convinced they’ve ceremonially murdered a woman. Don’t worry about it. Porn Michaels doesn’t. This is Staten Island. Apparently summers are different there.
The movie also contains an exhausting number of people. Gina Gershon, Jim Gaffigan and Kate Walsh are somehow all Danny’s poor parents, while Katie and Kelly Cockrell have an Asian-Jewish twin named Will. I don’t understand the genealogy and refuse to draw a diagram. Most importantly, actor-rapper Method Man plays a terrifying ice-cream vendor, which transforms Staten Island Summer from an ordinary comedy into a didactic survival story about staying alive long enough to purchase frozen desserts. There are jokes. There are parties. There are attractive young people making bad decisions. There is Method Man with ice cream. Eventually everybody becomes tired of their own popularity. That’s summer. That’s Staten Island. That’s Porn Michaels.
#8 Weird Science
You can’t discuss teenage sex comedies without talking about John Hughes, the man who actually invented pornography. Before Hughes, nobody had figured it out. Then one afternoon in Illinois he said, “What if naked people?” and an entire industry was born. In Weird Science, uptight Anthony Michael Hall and his friend Iban Mitchell Smith are two socially hopeless teenagers who decide to use their computer to create a virtual girlfriend. Instead, they accidentally perform some kind of electrical sex necromancy and summon Frankenstein’s wife, who immediately begins taking control of their lives. This movie is much fucking stranger than you remember. There are motorcycles, missiles, mutant relatives and Robert Downey Jr. wandering around being Robert Downey Jr. My daughter Alpha Dora saw him and became terrified. I don’t know why. Maybe children can sense the future.
Hughes’ earlier teenage movies relied heavily on characters and good dialogue, but Weird Science relies on computers, lightning and special effects involving upside-down pictures that can do the trick. Yet underneath all that nonsense is a surprisingly simple message: fantasy is dangerous. These boys think building their ideal girlfriend will magically turn them into confident adults, but instead they’ve created a supernatural woman with unlimited powers who can manipulate reality and apparently summon nuclear weapons. That’s not a girlfriend. That’s a national-security emergency. The boys eventually learn that becoming comfortable with themselves is healthier than manufacturing a human being on a computer.
#7 Easy A
It’s difficult to become famous in high school when you’re already a socially outcast pariah, but Oliver and Emma Stone discovered a way to change the game: sex. Or more specifically, lying about sex. Easy A is one of those rare female-led comedies willing to flip the script on virginity, reputation and the ridiculous double standards applied to teenage girls. Emma Stone plays Olive, who discovers that simply allowing people to believe she’s having sex is enough to completely restructure the social hierarchy of her school. She doesn’t even have to do anything. High school students are apparently so fucking bored that one imaginary sexual encounter becomes international news by lunch. The movie is also a pure comedy and contains one of cinema’s greatest singing scenes, proving once again that sexuality is temporary but aggressively singing a pop song is forever.
A website recommended Easy A to me and said it was rated PG-13, so naturally I assumed it would be wholesome family entertainment. My girlfriend and I were shocked. The teasing begins almost immediately. Somebody’s best friend uses some bitch’s braces. Emma has whore breasts. White girls become increasingly offensive to children and adults. Every time Emma Stone speaks, a child is burned alive. Eventually there’s supposed to be stripping, except Emma refuses to let anybody watch her strip while she’s performing, which completely defeats the economic model of stripping. Then there’s a teacher involved with an STD scandal, everybody’s reputation collapses, inappropriate behavior occurs, and somehow Emma Stone ends up happy with the man she loves. I made it very clear afterward that I don’t have this. Whatever “this” is. Absolutely disgusting. Completely inappropriate. Just a great movie!
#6 Wet Hot American Summer
Wet Hot American Summer takes everything stupid about old summer-camp teen movies and makes it even stupider. There are romances, counselors, swimming, talent shows, talking vegetables and supposedly teenage characters who somehow look like fully grown adults with mortgages. Elizabeth Banks gets bonus points for appearing multiple times in a bathing suit during a Wet Hot American Summer, which is precisely when bathing suits should be worn. Bradley Cooper is there. Paul Rudd is there. Amy Poehler is there. Everyone is approximately seventeen years old despite looking thirty. That’s part of the joke. Or maybe summer camps in 1981 were incredibly stressful and caused premature aging. Either way, this is what happens when you take a teenage summer movie, remove the teenagers and replace them with professional comedians pretending they haven’t paid taxes yet.
My parents warned me that Wet Hot American Summer contained sexually active camp counselors, homosexuality, cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and an absolutely astonishing amount of cocaine. At one point the counselors are sent into town to buy supplies and apparently decide the camp desperately needs cocaine. They buy cocaine. They use cocaine. They buy more cocaine. They discover additional methods of obtaining cocaine. Somewhere along the way I assume somebody remembers they were supposed to buy paper towels. There’s also tremendous profanity, including the important phrase “Duck fucker,” which should probably be engraved above the entrance to the Criterion Collection. Yet underneath all the drugs, swearing and absurdity, the movie is strangely sweet about letting its collection of weirdos be exactly who they are. Completely immature. Wildly inappropriate. Obviously intended for mature audiences. Therefore, according to the logic of this article, perfect for young people and the like. Celebrate!
#5 Ridgemont High’s Fast Times
Ridgemont High’s Fast Times is more than just a teen sex comedy. It has rock music. It has jobs. It has friendship. It has Sean Penn ordering pizza during school. But apparently some of you came here asking about the sex. Why? What exactly were you hoping I would describe? These characters are teenagers, you fucking weirdo. “Does somebody lose their virginity?” Why do you need to know that? “Is there nudity?” STOP ASKING QUESTIONS. There’s an infamous awkward masturbation scene too, but again, why did your ears perk up just now? I saw that. Put them back down. Ridgemont High’s Fast Times is a coming-of-age movie about adolescents stumbling through relationships, sexuality and adulthood. If you’re watching solely because you heard there are horny teenagers in it, society has several follow-up questions for you.
Parents should know that Ridgemont High’s Fast Times deals frankly with teenage sexuality, pregnancy, abortion, relationships and the consequences of making enormous decisions when you’re still figuring out who the hell you are. There’s also plenty of drug use, particularly from Jeff Spicoli, who regularly attends school under the influence of marijuana and even smokes the wicked lettuce directly on screen. Shocking. There are parties. There are irresponsible decisions. There are uncomfortable situations. There are strong words. But underneath all of that is a surprisingly thoughtful movie about teenagers discovering that adulthood is significantly more complicated than they expected. So watch it for the characters, the comedy and the cultural snapshot. And if you’re watching for anything else, I still have questions about you.
#4 Superbad
Is there a movie that captures the awkward stupidity surrounding teenage sex better than Superbad? Jonah Hill and Michael Cera play two high-school friends who have convinced themselves that obtaining alcohol and getting invited to a party will somehow solve every problem they’ve ever had. Written by Seth Rogen and produced by Judd Apatow, the movie perfectly understands the terrifying combination of hormones, insecurity and complete fucking ignorance that defines adolescence. Every conversation becomes about sex because these boys desperately want everyone to believe they understand sex despite clearly understanding nothing. Then McLovin appears and the movie becomes a documentary about the most powerful human being ever born. There’s also that scene where broken glass decapitates a man. We all laughed. Powerful filmmaking.
Parents should know that Superbad contains an enormous amount of profanity. I counted 219 shit, 91 additional shit, 14 mustard, 37 dicks, 20 varieties of round ass, eight uses of “sexy” that weren’t actually sexy, three mutant ass, one damn and approximately six thousand references to things these teenagers desperately hope to someday understand. There is also alcohol, pornography, terrible advice and McLovin. Eventually the movie reveals that beneath all the obsession with getting laid, these two idiots are actually terrified that graduation will separate them. That’s the sneaky heart of Superbad: they spend the entire movie talking about sex because admitting “I’m going to miss my best friend” would be emotionally unbearable. Also, 14 mustard. I don’t remember why I counted the mustard.
#3 Porky’s
The epic fantasy novel Porky’s is about a group of teenage boys who think about sex approximately nine thousand times per minute. They talk about it. They scheme about it. They spy on people. They compare themselves to each other. At one point an adult woman gets dragged into an extended discussion about identifying several boys by their anatomy, and the whole scene makes you want to take a shower and then perhaps watch a nice documentary about trains. Porky’s was one of the defining teenage sex comedies of its era, but watching it as an adult mostly makes me want to walk into the room and shout, “YOU HAVE OTHER INTERESTS! GO PLAY A SPORT! BUILD A MODEL AIRPLANE!” These teenagers desperately need hobbies.
My fiancée and I have a healthy adult sex life. My fiancée is also a stripper and has an OnlyFans, which means that unlike the teenagers in Porky’s, we are consenting adults and can mind our own fucking business. You can see many of her videos on—[PLEASE DON’T DIRECTLY LINK TO MY OF PAGE, KONTRIBUTOR. WE HAVE DISCUSSED THIS.] Fine. Anyway, we’re supposed to be talking about Porky’s. The movie is also very much a product of its era, including racial and antisemitic language that has aged considerably worse than the jokes about horny idiots. But perhaps its greatest contribution to world culture is the mysterious gentleman named Mike Hunt. Say his name quickly. It sounds like “My Lady’s Hole.” Absolutely sophisticated wordplay. Shakespeare could never.
#2 Meatballs
Ivan Reitman and Bill Murray began their film careers with the 1979 summer-camp masterpiece Meatballs. Murray plays the head counselor at a cheap camp where he befriends a lonely kid, teaches him confidence and occasionally remembers that he’s supposed to be supervising children. It’s not nearly as focused on teenage sex silliness as the later installments—particularly Meatballs III, universally recognized as the sexiest Meatball—but there’s still romance, hormones and all the usual summer-camp nonsense. Mostly, though, Meatballs understands that being a kid at camp means spending several weeks desperately trying to reinvent yourself before returning home exactly the same person except now you know three dirty jokes and have athlete’s foot.
Families can use Meatballs to begin important conversations. How accurately do movies portray the way young people think about relationships and sex? How do male and female characters approach these subjects differently? Which characters grow and learn something during the summer? Are strippers role models? What guidance have you received from strippers throughout your life? Have you ever met a stripper who helped you through a difficult situation? Would society improve if everyone had access to a responsible stripper mentor? What is the missing letter? Where did it go? Who took it? Do you like strippers? These are difficult questions, but parenting isn’t supposed to be easy. Neither is Meatballs III.
#1 American Pie Band Camp
The greatest young-adult sex comedy ever made is, of course, American Pie Presents: Band Camp. Matt Stifler dreams of following in the footsteps of his semi-legendary older brother Steve and becoming some kind of pornographic entrepreneur, despite possessing absolutely none of the skills required to accomplish this. After a high-school prank involving tear gas, musical instruments and apparently trying to deploy chemical weapons against his own crotch, Matt is sentenced to band camp. There he immediately develops another brilliant business plan: hide cameras around the camp because he assumes band geeks must be doing incredibly scandalous things when nobody is watching. This establishes Matt as both our protagonist and a fucking criminal. Fortunately, he’s also terrible at everything, so instead of becoming the Steven Spielberg of illegal surveillance, he mostly succeeds in making every person at band camp hate him.
But then something unexpected happens: Matt discovers that band people are human beings. He makes friends. He starts enjoying camp. He develops feelings for drummer Elyse and slowly begins transforming from Stifler’s horrible little brother into his own horrible little person. Then his old friends arrive and accuse him of betraying the sacred institution of sports by associating with marching-band students, forcing Matt to make the most important decision of his young life: Does he become his brother, or does he become his own brother? Powerful. Profound. This is why American Pie Presents: Band Camp sits at #1. Not because of sex. Not because of nudity. Not even because of pie. It’s because one young man finally learns the most important lesson adolescence can teach us: stop putting fucking cameras everywhere, Matt.
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