Rated T for TeenLooking for movies and TV shows that are rated T for Teen? These lists feature great movies and TV programs about teens, enjoyed by people of all ages.
Updated December 21, 2021 43.6K votes 9.8K voters 482.7K views
Voting Rules
Vote up the illogical moments you think are most distracting. Vote down the things you can gloss over.
There are things that don't make sense in movies and then there are things that really don't make sense in movies, particularly in movies about teens. The nonsense is not just confined to holes in storylines, but also includes a frequent lack of consequences for characters in movies that would have totally derailed their happy endings or other plot elements in real life. Even some of the best teen movies are guilty of this, like Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, to name a few. To some extent, bad logic in teen movies is a given: for example, tossing glasses and a ponytail on Rachael Leigh Cook, a professional modelin real life, is not going to make her the ugly person she attempts to portray in She's All That. The examples don't stop there. What about the fact that Amanda Bynes's character misses two weeks of school with absolutely zero consequences in She's the Man? Those type of problems can really take a viewer out of the experience.
Here are some discrepancies in teen movies that are never explained. Sometimes they prove to be quite distracting, and hopefully if you hadn't noticed them before, finding them out now won't ruin any of your favorite memories. Vote up the ones that stick out like a sore thumb, and vote down the illogical moments in teen movies that don't really seem important enough to bug you.
Josie (Drew Barrymore) is a 25-year-old who poses as a high school student for journalistic research. First of all, there's no indication that she's attained legal authority to adopt a false identity, making her infiltration of a high school sketchy or perhaps even legally jeopardizing. Even worse, however, is her English teacher Sam Coulson (Michael Vartan), with whom she fosters a romantic relationship.
While this technically wouldn't be illegal given her actual age, it's a pretty significant red flag that Mr. Coulson considered dating one of his students. In the end, a reasonable school board would have fired him and filed for a restraining order.
There is nothing in the movie Grease to indicate that it's a fantasy or that magic exists in the world. It is a high school musical. So how in the flying Wallenda does the car fly away at the end? Also, why does the car fly away at the end? It is complete nonsense. To get away with that, there absolutely must be some sort of establishment earlier in the film that the car is either magical or extremely technologically advanced.
It's hard to point to another example of this in film. It's like if, at the end of Sleepless in Seattle, instead of taking the elevator down, Sam and Annie just jumped off the roof of the Empire State Building and flew away. Utter nonsense.
In the surprising 2006 Oscars snub She's the Man, Viola (Amanda Bynes) impersonates her brother, leaving the high school she attends to go to his for two weeks, impersonating him so she can play on the boys' soccer team for good measure. However, she could have tried out for the soccer team as a female, as under federal law (Title IX) it's illegal to deny the right for someone to do so based on gender.
Then there's the issue of her leaving school for two weeks with absolutely no consequence. Also, her roommate Duke (Channing Tatum), is totally into her while she's impersonating a man... and that interesting sexuality subplot is never addressed.
After Fogell/McLovin gets punched in the liquor store in Superbad, the cops show up, so Seth and Evan bail. Thus begins their frantic search for alcohol, as they assume Fogell will no longer be able to provide it. But Fogell gets to hang on to his booze, and all he needed to do was text Seth and Evan to tell them everything was gravy.
Had he done that, which seems like the first response of anyone in that situation, none of the shenanigans would have ensued. Sure, this had to happen for the sake of the plot, but they should have had the robber steal Fogell's phone or something explaining why he couldn't contact them.
Bella (Kristen Stewart) has special blood. It's extra fragrant, according to Alice (Ashley Greene). James (Cam Gigandet) seems to be more attracted to it than the blood of most humans and Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) straight up flips out when he sees/smells it. The question is why? What is so special about her blood?
At no point is it explained. It's clearly a big deal, as numerous people react to it, but what does it mean?!
More specifically, the Time-Turners should have solved every problem in the Harry Potter universe. Then again, the magical folk really could have used them to solve every problem ever. To recap, in the third installment of the Harry Potter series, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) go back in time to save Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) and Buckbeak (Himself) using a magical time traveling device. Just within the context of that film, they could have gone back and put Scabbers/Wormtail in a cage so he couldn't escape.
Out of the film's context, Dumbledore could have used Time-Turners to stop Voldemort form the get-go. More than just a massive, gaping plot hole, they could have at least come up with some explanation for why they could not have used the devices for bigger goals than merely harvesting school credits for one student.
