Teen movie tropes are so common viewers barely notice them anymore. Of course, there will be the big dance, the fight over who will be prom queen, and there will be at least one nerdy girl who will take off her glasses only to discover she's actually beautiful.
All these tropes start off with a nugget of truth, but through overuse have become cliches, worn down, and in need of replacing. Many teen movies of the early 2000s use one or two of these tropes, but others are made up entirely of them. While they will never fully go away, awareness will help the viewer spot the most over-used tropes and see just how cringey some of them really can be.
The Gay Best Friend
The gay best friend has been around for years, but previously the character wasn't openly gay, they were the "bachelor" friend of the lead. Those parts were played by actors like Paul Lynn, Edward Everett Horton, and Franklin Pangborn. By the 2000s, the character could be out in the open about their sexuality.
The gay best friend was featured in movies like Camp, with the character Michael, and in Mean Girls with Damien. The character exists to give the lead someone to tell all her troubles to and commiserate with. They're often most used for comic relief.
The Evil Principal
The evil or clueless principal is in almost every teen school movie. It's almost a given that the principal will abuse and harass the main characters and make their lives unfairly miserable. Or they will not really know how to do their job and be bumbling about in a comical manner. This is one of the most used teen comedy tropes.
The Principals in both School of Rock and Mean Girls aren't evil, just fairly clueless about their own schools and students. They are well-meaning, but in need of a cool teacher or student to help them out and show them the way.
The 'Big Dance'
The build-up to the big dance happens in nearly every high school movie, in most cases acting as the setting for the final scene. An example of this is The New Guy where the climax is a big dance that the rival football team crashes.
Reality is more like some streamers from the party store hung in the gym, flat soda in two-liter bottles with plastic cups, hand-lettered signs by the art club, and food by volunteers that will involve a meat and cheese plate bought from the supermarket.
The Mean Cheerleaders
The meanest girl in teen movies is usually a cheerleader. There must have been a lot of filmmakers and screenwriters that had bad experiences with cheerleaders because this trope is reused constantly.
The best example is Bring It On, where the cheerleaders act like a velociraptor pack wherever they went. Instead of placing so much hate onto cheerleaders, but why not make them uppity chess club members? The mean cheerleader is a trope that should be eliminated.
The Magic Makeover
In this trope, a so-called 'nerdy' girl takes off her glasses, gets a new wardrobe and hairstyle, and she's suddenly a knockout. This is seen in many films, most notably in Princess Diaries, where not only is the nerdy girl actually beautiful, she's also a princess. This is a trope that might also be inspired by the John Huges comedies, where he used it more than once.
This is also seen in Mean Girls, where the lead gets a makeover and is not only beautiful, but she becomes a mean girl as well.
The Fat Best Friend
In Hollywood, the rule must be that 'fat is funny'. This is why over and over in teen movies the protagonist gets a fat friend to handle the comedy relief while they go through all their drama. Examples of this trope are Superbad and Not Another Teen Movie.
The fat friend can any gender, but they do have to be goofy, nerdy, have little sense of fashion, and probably have to fall down a few times for the sake of the 'comedy.'
Teens Desperate To Lose Their Virginity
Many teen comedies either have a character or characters that are desperate to rid themselves of their virginity. Sometimes the plot of the whole movie will revolve around the trope, like in Superbad, or the American Pie franchise.
In these films, the need to divest themselves of their virginity is usually treated in a comedic way, with the teen trying different personas, learning pickup lines, and generally treating the object of their desires as just that, objects to be won and used, not people or relationships to be cherished.
Everybody Drinks And Gets Stoned
In nearly every teen movie, there is an adult-free party with easy access to alcohol and drugs. In Superbad, the characters spend a lot of the running time trying to get drunk or stoned. While these were some of Superbad funniest scenes, how much of this is really true?
So Many Cliques
Every high school movie always has 'cliques': the nerds, the band nerds, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the hot girls, and so on. There are rigid walls and rules to be followed, and no fraternization can happen outside of the clique. This is evident in films like High School Musical, Mean Girls, The New Guy, and Superbad.