Whether they’re rocking out on a tour bus, planning a Vegas heist, reading Thoreau or skipping detention, you know these famous movie groups make you want to hop on the bandwagon and join in on the fun.
The Band-Aids When you watch the tour bus sing-along of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” there’s nothing you want more than to be one of the groupies in Almost Famous (2000). In their role as muses to the band Stillwater, the Band-Aids live a life of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll — for free. They make the world of messy hotel rooms and frequent overdoses look sexy and interesting — plus they get to party with rockstars. As Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) puts it, “Famous people are just more interesting.” We totally agree.
Ocean’s Eleven Eleven men, three casinos, and $150 million. Ocean’s Eleven (2001) sets the stakes high — the scheme includes robbing the Bellagio, the Mirage and the MGM Grand — but the thrill of the film is watching Danny Ocean and his ten accomplices interact. They’re definitely an eclectic group, comprised of a thief, a right hand man, a pickpocket, a card dealer, a surveillance guy, a Chinese acrobat, an explosives expert, two frontmen and a casino mogul. The Rat Pack made being a criminal seem exciting in the original (1960), but Clooney, Pitt and Damon did it even better the second time around. As the film’s tagline says, “They’re having so much fun, it’s illegal.”
The Dead Poets Society Set at the “best prep school in America,” The Dead Poets Society (1989) follows an impressionable group of boys as they are introduced to a subversive new professor, John Keating (Robin Williams). He tells his students to “carpe diem, seize the day, boys, make your lives extraordinary,” and they certainly heed his advice. The boys form a secret society, A Separate Peace style, and sneak off to a cave to read Transcendentalist classics in the moonlight. Keating inspires his pupils to be rebellious while also fostering intellectual curiosity. Now we expect our own Ivy League professors to do the same.
The Breakfast Club Although from different social circles, these five teenagers all have one thing in common on Saturday morning: detention. During the nine hours of high school hell, they discover that everyone has issues with their parents, freaks out about their friends and gets angry thinking of their futures. What’s charming about The Breakfast Club (1985) is that all viewers can identify with the princess, the criminal, the basket case, the brain and the jock. They start out self-interested and judgemental but ultimately find the good in each other. It warms our hearts that these teenagers can spill their secrets and put aside their differences, if only for a day.
