2000s Teen Movies That Haven't Aged a Day

Where to stream: Paramount+

Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) moves from homeschooling in Africa to a suburban Illinois high school and gets recruited to infiltrate the Plastics — the most powerful clique in school. Tina Fey wrote it. Mark Waters directed it. It's still the best high school movie of the decade, and it's not a competition.

What makes it work twenty years on isn't the quotability — though "fetch" and "on Wednesdays we wear pink" have outlasted most actual cultural touchstones. It's that the movie is genuinely smart about how girls police each other. The cruelty is specific and recognizable. The satire has actual teeth.

Rachel McAdams as Regina George is one of the more underrated comedic performances of the 2000s. She plays the role completely straight, which is the only way it could work.

If you haven't watched it since high school, it's better than you remember.

Where to stream: Netflix, Peacock

Two best friends — Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) — spend one chaotic night before graduation trying to get alcohol for a party and, more to the point, trying to figure out what happens when their lives diverge after high school. Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg when they were teenagers. It shows, in the best way.

Here's the thing about Superbad: it's funnier and sadder than its reputation suggests. The comedy is loud and crude and earns most of its laughs. But the actual emotional core — two guys who know they're drifting apart and don't know how to say it — is genuinely touching. The last fifteen minutes hit differently on a rewatch.

Jonah Hill's Seth is exhausting in exactly the right way. Michael Cera was never more perfectly deployed. And the McLovin subplot remains a miracle of escalation.

Where to stream: Netflix

Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) tells a small lie about losing her virginity, it spirals out of control via high school gossip, and she leans into it — charging money to fake-hook up with unpopular guys who need a reputation boost. The whole thing is framed as a retelling of The Scarlet Letter, which works much better than it sounds.

Easy A should be more famous than it is. Emma Stone is the entire movie — she's in almost every scene, she carries every joke, and she makes Olive feel real in a way teen comedies rarely bother with. The screenplay (by Bert V. Royal) is sharp and genuinely funny. The supporting cast, including Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's parents, is remarkable.

If you wrote it off as a cute movie, watch it again. It's one of the better comedies of the decade, full stop.

Where to stream: Peacock

Torrance Shipman (Kirsten Dunst) becomes captain of a championship cheerleading squad and discovers the routines they've been performing were stolen from a Black squad in Compton. That's the actual plot. And the movie handles it better than it had any right to.

Bring It On gets dismissed as a fluffy cheerleading movie and it is, partially. But it's also one of the more honest mainstream films of the era about cultural appropriation — decades before that phrase was in common usage. The Clovers aren't just there to be wronged; they're the ones who actually win, on their terms. The white squad has to reckon with what they did.

It's also just extremely fun. The choreography holds up. The dialogue is fast. Gabrielle Union (Isis) is great. And the ending is one of the few in this genre that actually earns its happy resolution.

Where to stream: Disney+

Juno MacGuff (Elliot Page) gets pregnant at sixteen, decides against abortion, and spends the rest of the movie navigating adoption, her parents, her best friend, and the guy she actually loves. Diablo Cody won the Oscar for the screenplay. It deserved it.

The "quirky indie dialogue" style took some heat in the years after release — and honestly, some of it earned that — but underneath the affectations is a movie that handles a genuinely difficult situation with more honesty than most adult dramas manage. Juno's relationship with her dad (J.K. Simmons) is quietly one of the best parent-teenager dynamics in any film of the decade.

It's also funnier than people remember. The opening convenience store scene alone is worth the watch.

Where to stream: Max

Four best friends — Lena (Alexis Bledel), Tibby (Amber Tamblyn), Bridget (Blake Lively), and Carmen (America Ferrera) — spend their first summer apart, connected by a pair of jeans that somehow fits all of them. That premise sounds like it shouldn't work and then it absolutely does.

What makes Sisterhood worth revisiting is that it takes all four storylines seriously. Each girl gets a real arc, a real problem, and a real emotional resolution. The movie doesn't condescend to its audience and it doesn't tie everything up neatly. Bridget's storyline in particular goes somewhere genuinely dark for a film rated PG.

America Ferrera is the standout, though the whole ensemble is good. If you only saw this once in 2005, it holds up better than you'd expect.

Where to stream: Peacock

Another Shakespeare adaptation — Twelfth Night this time — and a very funny one. Viola (Amanda Bynes) disguises herself as her twin brother to play soccer at his school. Duke (Channing Tatum, in his second film role) is her oblivious roommate.

This is the movie people mean when they say Amanda Bynes was genuinely talented. Her physical comedy is precise and committed. The disguise premise is absurd and she plays it completely straight. Channing Tatum is doing something interesting here too — Duke is sweet and not particularly bright, and Tatum plays him without any self-consciousness about that.

It's not as sharp as 10 Things but it's funnier than people give it credit for.

Where to stream: Tubi (free), Amazon Prime Video

Jess Bhamra (Parminder Nagra) wants to play football — real football, not the family-approved version of her life. Her traditional Punjabi-British family wants her to learn to cook and marry well. She plays on a local women's team behind their backs.

This one has gotten better with time. The cultural specificity is detailed and affectionate, and it doesn't resolve the tensions by having the family just come around — the negotiation at the end is realistic. Keira Knightley is in this, early enough that she's not yet doing Keira Knightley things, and she's charming.

It's also the rare sports movie in this genre where the sport feels real.

Where to stream: Not currently streaming in the US — available on digital rental

The gymnastics movie that Bring It On fans never knew they needed. Haley Graham (Missy Peregrino) is forced into elite gymnastics training under legendary coach Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges) as an alternative to juvenile detention. She's furious about it. He's fine with that.

What makes Stick It interesting is that it's genuinely angry about the way the sport treats female athletes — the judging criteria, the sexualization, the arbitrary rules. The movie written and directed by Jessica Bendinger, who also wrote Bring It On, and the politics feel consistent across both films.

It's more uneven than Bring It On and the ending is messy. But the middle of this movie is something. Worth tracking down.