The Best Young Adult Dramas

Hayley Mills is a hell-raising teenager living with her eccentric grandmother who becomes insistent upon knowing all the secrets of her mysterious new governess (Deborah Kerr), a woman who paces in her room at night and doesn't seem to have a friend or a relative in the world. An acting tour-de-force for the ladies, with an exquisite production from Ross Hunter.

Busy teenager Connie Stevens gets kissed, gets pregnant, hopes to get married but instead gets sidelined by fate. Mom poses as the baby's mother to save face. Watch out! Gorgeous Lucien Ballard cinematography and Max Steiner scoring adds this to heart-rending drama, topped with camp flourishes and Stevens' exquisite beauty and solid acting. No, she's not Meryl Streep, but she connects with the viewer on an emotional level and is never less than fascinating.

Carol Lynley and Brandon de Wilde experiment with intimacy--much to their chagrin. Not really a film about regrets or hard decisions, rather a film dealing with mistakes, and with explaining your actions to your parents.

I'm not sure why this story about misguided young love had to be set during the time of the Stock Market Crash, except to add a bit of background; otherwise, a first-rate example of how our emotions lead us astray. Natalie Wood, cracking up in the hospital, her eyes wild repeating "Is somebody there? Is somebody there?", delivers one of her best performances.

Jodie Foster is dying of heart disease, and so wants the last year of her young life to be filled with new experiences and wonderment. She and a neighbor boy (Brad Savage) talk about the mystery of sex, finally deciding it must be something like lying down together and holding hands. Based on an unsuccessful Broadway play (which starred the equally young Patty Duke), "Echoes" has been almost forgotten except for a few cult-movie die-hards. It attempts to discuss the realities of death (particularly a young person's death) in a serious, non-melodramatic way, though the scenario is underlined with sentiment. Still, a good showcase for 12-year-old Foster, with Richard Harris and Lois Nettleton solid as her parents.

Just off "The Flying Nun", Sally Field makes an impressive acting U-turn with this complicated drama of young love, parents, drugs, freedom, and insecurity in suburbia. Trying to get through to her drunken parents about an urgent family matter, Sally gives up, lets out a scream, and dives into the swimming pool with all her clothes on. She's trying to escape yet still retain her roots--and her youthful feelings of helplessness and confusion are powerful to this day.

There was nobody more troubled on-screen in the 1970s than Linda Blair was! Here she's a high school misfit with a new stepfather, a meddling mother, a boyfriend (Mark Hamill) whom she's not allowed to see, and a ne'er-do-well father (Larry Hagman) who makes lots of promises to Sarah he can't possibly keep; she turns to the bottle. Scenes of Blair (very cute in braces and floppy hats) scheming to get her hands on booze are unforgettable, while everyone learns a lesson in the end about how tough it is to be a teenager.

Patty Duke is the proverbial Ugly Ducking who moves from the Brooklyn Boroughs to the Big Apple after high school and...doesn't turn into the proverbial Swan! She gets a waitressing job (at the Topless & Bottomless Club), gets her own studio apartment, falls in love with a married man, and comes to the realization that nobody controls her life, her heart, her emotions. She's her own girl ("I'm me...Natalie!") and nothin's gonna stop her now. Pure movie pleasure.

Liza Minnelli (in only her second major acting role on-screen) as an anti-social college student in love for the first time. Her Pookie Adams encompasses all the things we often see in ourselves that we don't like and wish we could change: her neediness, her paranoia, her desire to ruin everything good before IT ruins HER. One of the most poignant endings ever, and Liza is a treasure.

Cher's role as a somewhat flighty and irresponsible single mother of two takes a surprising backseat to Winona Ryder as her eldest daughter, an idealistic high schooler anxious to grow up and get away from Mom. Ryder was THE teen star of 1990, and she pulls off some incredible moments here while balancing comedy and pathos. Perhaps this is one reason why Cher never spoke with much love for "Mermaids"--it is Ryder's angst and longing we ultimately remember.