MARK JUDGE: Teen movies have changed a lot over the decades.

Someone coming across the new book Hollywood High: A Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies might be fooled. The cover, a fun sky blue color and featuring the head shots of Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Sean Penn, James Dean, and other teen stars, makes the book seem like a breezy read through a cotton candy subject.

Hollywood High author Bruce Handy worked at Vanity Fair for 20 years. His book examines “movies about teenagers,” and breaks down into different eras: Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy films (1937–1946); teen rebellion movies such as the iconic Rebel Without a Cause (1955); the Beach Party movies of the 1960s; American Graffiti and the 1970s; Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982; the John Hughes 80s classics Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Boyz N the Hood and black filmmakers of the 1990s; Mean Girls in 2004; the Twilight saga (2008–2012); and finally The Hunger Games series (2012–2015).

Handy is great at revealing things about these well-known films you may not have thought about. He also, while not politically conservative, gives the conservative side a fair hearing. He quotes an academic who argues that 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a lament by children who missed the 1960s.

Read the whole thing.