All work and no play makes the overachieving BFFs of Booksmart dull girls – in their own minds, at least. However, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) aren’t about to graduate high school and let everyone else have all the fun. They put their smarts and hard work into one crazy night out before graduation, and the end result is one of the best-reviewed movies of the year.

With Olivia Wilde’s high school comedy in theaters, we’re getting nostalgic for past movies with brainy young women. Whether they’re winning Mathlete tournaments, dreaming of the stars, or writing novels, these are the teen girls and high school movies that have wowed audiences with their wits.

1. ‘Mean Girls’ (2004)

Thanks to the script from Tina Fey, there’s real depth beneath the bubblegum-pink lip gloss finish of this teen comedy.

Mean Girls stars Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron, a new student who is a rock star at math. However, she lacks social intelligence when it comes to the strata of American high schools after being homeschooled in Africa by her zoologist parents. She schemes to get into The Plastics, the cool girl clique led by queen bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams), but popularity isn’t all she dreamed it would be in this new world of gossip and rumors. Watching Cady play dumb to get the attention of Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett) is painful, but she’s intelligent enough, in the end, to realize that it’s better to be your smart Mathlete self than to get the cute boy to notice you.

2. ‘Real Women Have Curves’ (2002)

Director Patricia Cardoso’s Sundance favorite is mostly remembered for its body positive messaging, but it should also be celebrated for its representation of a super smart Latinx heroine.

Real Women Have Curves stars America Ferrera in her breakout role as Ana, a high school senior in East L.A. whose mother (Lupe Ontiveros) discourages her from applying to college in New York City and pressures her to work at her sister’s sewing factory instead. However, Ana has worked hard throughout school and has the encouragement of a high school teacher (George Lopez), who pushes her to apply to Columbia University through his connections. Like its heroine, Curves is warm and funny with a self-confidence that sets it apart from its fellow coming-of-age movies.

3. ‘Say Anything…’ (1989)

If you grew up in the ‘80s, who among us didn’t want to be Diane Court (Ione Skye), Say Anything‘s high school valedictorian who earned that famous boombox serenade by John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler? Beyond just being book smart, Diane is goal oriented and so focused on her future that she initially resists the underachieving Lloyd’s pursuit of her. Many movies make female intelligence a romantic deterrent rather than an asset, but it’s part of what attracts Lloyd to her. Ultimately, Diane doesn’t give up what she wants when she does agree to be with him, and instead, he’s the one who tags along with her as she jets off into her next academic adventure, a prestigious fellowship in England.

4. ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ (1999)

Most of the time, smart girls in movies are the well-behaved ones, beloved by their teachers for both their intelligence and their good behavior. An exception to that rule is Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) in this loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

10 Things I Hate About You introduces her as she pulls into the high school parking lot, blasting Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” from her beat-up car. She reads The Bell Jar for fun and has well-developed opinions of Ernest Hemingway: “He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers.” Written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith, this is a rom-com at its core, but it gives Kat a life and dreams beyond a potential romance with Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), including the goal of going to Sarah Lawrence College. Kat is a rebel, but she isn’t one without a cause; instead, she thinks for herself and encourages those around her to do the same.

5. ‘The Sun Is Also a Star’ (2019)

Let’s hear it for the girls and women in STEM, who are vastly underrepresented on screen, but director Ry Russo-Young’s hazy romance is a step in the right direction.

Yara Shahidi stars as Natasha, a left-brain-leaning high school student who is obsessed with the stars. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see astronomy as a viable career path, and instead plans on being a data scientist, which, let’s be honest, is also pretty cool. She walks the audience through the Big Bang and multiverse theory, and her passion for learning is as clear as her crush on Daniel Bae (Charles Melton). The Sun Is Also a Star is adapted from Nicola Yoon’s YA bestseller by Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip), and it offers not only a super sweet love story, but it also gives women, especially women of color, someone to look up to if they’re into science.

6. ‘Little Women’ (1994)

Presumably, women can identify with at least one of the March girls in Gillian Armstrong’s Little Women – except Amy, who is the worst – but the smart, book-loving ones often find a kindred spirit in Winona Ryder’s Jo. She writes imaginative novels that she and her three sisters turn into elaborate plays, and she desperately wishes she could go to college like her neighbor Laurie (Christian Bale). She also makes a persuasive argument for women’s suffrage that didn’t fall prey to the sexist logic of the day: That women deserve to vote because they’re good.

But the 1860s didn’t favor female intelligence or ambition, making it difficult for Jo to find her way to becoming the writer she always dreamed of. Louisa May Alcott’s best-known novel has been adapted a half-dozen other times on film, and director George Cukor’s 1933 version is equally worthy of your time, particularly for Katharine Hepburn’s spirited turn as Jo. Greta Gerwig’s take, starring Saoirse Ronan as my favorite March sister, arrives in theaters on Christmas Day.

7. ‘Clueless’ (1995)

Alicia Silverstone’s Valley Girl doesn’t feel like most of her peers here, but don’t think that Cher Horowitz doesn’t deserve to be on this list. Just because she loves the mall, it doesn’t mean she’s not smart. She’s got a great vocabulary and knows how to negotiate her way to better grades, which may not be as good as actually earning them, but who am I to judge?

She makes a solid argument for allowing refugees in America and connects it to her own life in a way that shows that she gets the concept, even if she can’t pronounce Haitians (and bless director Amy Heckerling for keeping Silverstone’s real gaffe in). Her knowledge of Latin America leaves something to be desired and she perhaps has an overdependence on CliffsNotes, but Cher does know Shakespeare and Monet. Most importantly, she knows when she’s wrong and has the ability to learn and evolve and no longer be clueless.

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