10 Most Inspirational Teen Movies Of All Time

“There ain't nothing to *do* with me, Daddy. You like it or not, this is it. It doesn't get much better.”

Kevin Bacon’s signature movie is like a low-fat, high-sugar Rebel Without A Cause, especially given that the first half of the film is like Rebel redux. His Chicago teen Ren moves to a small town in the mid-west where the local council has banned rock music and dancing as a knee-jerk response to the drugs and booze that caused a car accident that recently claimed the lives of three high school kids.

Astonishingly, the film’s premise is based on a true story: even more astonishingly, many have since come out and admitted that their own community had a similar ban in place. Ren just gots to dance, however. He works on getting the narrow-minded reactionaries in charge to change their minds, while falling for the daughter of the local preacher.

Despite the town’s bible-bashing fear of the archetypal rebellious teenager, Ren and his friends are not that kind of teen rebel. Dancing isn’t about getting wasted and partying for him: it’s an act of self-expression and stress relief, something he sees as entirely innocent and even beneficial for him and his peers.

Ren isn’t trying to kick back against The Man: he’s trying to show The Man that he’s made a mistake, that the kids are alright after all, and he goes exactly the right way about it, despite occasionally smoking so angrily it’s like a cigarette ran over his dog. Like all the best teen films, Footloose tells us that teenagers can be independent and question authority without f*cking up and getting into trouble: that they can handle a little responsibility every so often.

The genius of Footloose is in that innocence: the scene where Ren tries to teach the clumsy, self-conscious Willard a few moves is both funny and really rather touching. In the end, impressed by their passion and honesty, the supposed villain of the piece, the preacher himself, is moved to give the kids the agency and the respect they’re after and allow the prom to go ahead - dancing and all.