You are invited to chime in here; I really want some other input:

This [Fast Times at Ridgemont High] was one of the two “pivotal” teen-age coming-of-age movies, in American cinema, a position it shares with American Graffiti.

Of course, to establish this cusp, we must discount such monumental cinematic achievements as Summer of ’42. But, even the casual observer must agree that these films are of a different genre.

Ok, readers: how would you write the rest of this post?

Update: Well, there’s a couple of comments which, while anything but vacuous, are pretty non-sequitur. 🙂 Are either of these movies great? Well, that depends upon where one places the threshold of greatness. But American Graffiti is #77 on AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies list.

What I’m getting at, is more along the lines of them marking the beginning and end of an era with teen coming-of-age comedies ascendeding from the cheap, formulaic crap of the ’60s (the Tammy series, the Gidget series, the Beach Party series, most of the Elvis movies), and then descending back into today’s cheap, formulaic crap, as parodied with Not Another Teen Movie.