By Andrés Muñoz

The college experience. While many of us had our very own version of college life, most Hollywood films generally stick with the classic Americana trope: Large house parties, red plastic cups, and lots of debauchery and mischief. 

Most of these movies are comedies that have established that genre. But this list will also pivot to other groundbreaking films based in colleges to give you a more rounded education. Let’s go…

Superbad

Starring the personification of millennial quirkiness, Michael Cera, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone at the very start of their careers, Superbad is about high school friends who try to make the most of their last few weeks before college. 

Teenage awkwardness is rampant in this one, with Cera and Hill’s characters trying to figure out how to hit on girls and look cool at house parties.

Project X

It was the early 2010s, and the Paranormal Activity franchise had taken the world by storm with its found-footage format. British director Nima Nourizadeh flipped this idea on its head, creating a found footage comedy of the world’s biggest rager. 

What starts as a standard house party with friends quickly snowballs into a massive bacchanal involving alcohol, drugs, flamethrowers, and a SWAT team to boot! 

Neighbours

Seth Rogen and Zac Efron star in this 2014 classic about a young couple who has a fraternity move into the house next door. The 30-year-olds get caught up in their wild party lifestyle while trying to juggle the challenges of being young parents. 

Reeling in $270 million at the box office from an $18 million budget, the sequel titled Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising sees the same couple face a new college challenge, this time in the form of a sorority house. 

21 Jump Street

21 Jump Street is based on a television series in the 1980s starring Johnny Depp. The movie is a buddy cop comedy starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. The film’s protagonists go undercover at a high school to prevent the outbreak of a brand-new synthetic drug. 

Highly successful at the box office, 21 Jump Street gave way to another sequel titled 22 Jump Street, this time with Hill and Tatum’s characters going undercover at a college to bust a drug ring and indulging in plenty of partying along the way.

American Pie

This late 90s movie became a generational classic in American films. The sex comedy tells the story of four friends who make a pact to lose their virginity before finishing high school. As the young men do their best to find a partner for prom night, the film is a deliberate stream of awkward moments where the audience both suffers for them but also can’t wait to see what happens next. 

Released in 1999, when the internet was barely starting, and young men had to figure out all of this through word of mouth or stories from older brothers, it’s an interesting take on how each character ultimately navigates their journey through sexuality while adding cringy yet funny scenes throughout. The film gave way to three other series in the original storyline and five other spinoff films. 

The Social Network

Not all films in the genre are comedies. The David Fincher-directed, The Social Network, tells us the story of two friends who ultimately created Facebook. With Aaron Sorkin’s taut dialogues throughout and dark and dense cinematography, this film was nominated for several Academy Awards and won Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, and Film Editing. 

We are no longer in the raunchy parties in the middle of the US. We’re taken instead to the elite soirees of Harvard’s secret clubs and societies. We see engineering student parties where coding is held in high regard and exclusive parties in the San Francisco Bay Area clubs, where multimillion-dollar deals are born, as is Facebook. 

Parties aside, though, this is an intriguing story of betrayal, greed, and what happens when money gets in the way of friendship.

Whiplash

Let’s finish with one of my favourite movies of all time. Starring Miles Teller and J. K. Simmons, Whiplash tells the story of an up-and-coming drummer at a music school. He is excited to take a class with a demanding teacher, only to be forced to face fundamental questions about how far he wants to go as a musician. The scenes are always tense, with Teller and Simmons delivering fantastic performances throughout. 

Whiplash gave Damien Chazelle his breakthrough in Hollywood, and he went on to direct La La Land, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

Whether comedic, tragic or thought-provoking or full of beer pong, coding, or drumming, the college experience ultimately helps pave the way to who we aspire to be. These coming-of-age movies encapsulate the trials and tribulations of this time in our lives.

What other college-themed films did we miss? Let us know in the comments section below!