The History BoysMovies like The History Boys
- Key Features:
- Education, British humor, Coming-of-age, Teacher-student relationship, Social class, Intellectualism, Homosexuality, Mortality, Ensemble cast, Boarding school, Academic pressure
- Tone:
- witty, humorous, earnest
- Target Audience:
- British film enthusiasts, Fans of witty dialogue, Viewers interested in education and coming-of-age stories, Intellectual audiences
- Emotional Arc:
- Amusement → Reflection → Acceptance
The History Boys

The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.
The History Boys
In 1985, against the backdrop of Thatcherism, Brian Jackson enrolls in the University of Bristol, a scholarship boy from seaside Essex with a love of knowledge for its own sake and a childhood spent watching University Challenge, a college quiz show. At Bristol he tries out for the Challenge team and falls under the spell of Alice, a lovely blond with an extensive sexual past.

When a well-loved headmaster decides to retire, his scheming pupils have other ideas. The cunning boys unleash a campaign of practical jokes, armed with gin, itching power, and bombs!

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

High school graduation just wouldn’t be complete without an un-chaperoned, uninhibited and unforgettable final holiday. At least that’s what Will, Jay, Simon and Neil think when they book a two-week stay on an exotic Greek island. As their dreams of sun-drenched days and booze-filled nights are left hopelessly unfulfilled, the lads fight their way into the party scene with hilariously humiliating results.

In the school-set re-working of Cyrano, an awkward but imaginative pupil helps the handsome but spectacularly dim school-hero pursue the fiery daughter of a visiting French teacher.

Small-town Pennsylvania schoolteacher Linda Sinclair balances her staid home life with an incredible passion for her subject. Then a former star pupil reenters her life after failing as a playwright in New York City. Seeing in his script the inspiration that she has always longed to instill in her students, this dyed-in-the-wool romantic enlists the help of long-suffering drama teacher Carl to mount the work as the high school’s next and riskiest production.

Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.

Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the football team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years in the face of everything life threw at it – the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.

At a prestigious all-male university, three friends seek love outside of the school grounds; at the same time, a newly-hired music teacher seeks to befriend and loosen up the militantly strict headmaster.

Mr Wickers and his class go on one final school trip after they finish their GCSEs.

Andrew Crocker-Harris is an embittered and disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British prep school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire for 'health reasons', and perhaps may not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His unfaithful wife Laura tries to hurt him in any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and at least regain his own self-esteem.

Two first-year students at Oxford University join a secret society and learn that their reputations can be made or destroyed over the course of one evening.

Rome, 1989. On his last day of high school, Luca gets in trouble when he takes it all out on hated literature teacher Martinelli, only to discover he's going to be heading the examination board for his finals. During a summer of fruitless study, he falls in love with a girl he met once at a party, unaware that she's Martinelli's daughter. The latter, strangely enough, has just offered Luca to prepare with him...

With their teen hormones raging, three high school boys help one another explore their curiosity about the opposite sex and love in this raunchy comedy.

In an English boys' boarding school, social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. Three Lower Sixth students, Wallace, Johnny and leader Mick Travis decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.

A coming-of-age movie that tells a story unfolding in every high school around the country -- a story of kids hiding their true identities in plain sight, even as they feverishly pursue their hearts' desires.

The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.

Alex Truelove is on a quest to lose his virginity, an event eagerly awaited by his patient girlfriend and cheered on with welcome advice by his rowdy friends. But Alex, a super gregarious dude, is oddly unmotivated. A magical house party throws Alex into the presence of Elliot, a hunky college guy, who pegs Alex as gay and flirts hard. Alex is taken aback but after a series of setbacks on the girlfriend front he takes the plunge and learns some interesting new facts about himself.

A British Guianese engineer starts a job as a high school teacher in London’s East End, where his uninterested and delinquent pupils are in desperate need of attention and care.

Ernesto and Filippo, two high school teachers, couldn’t be more different: Filippo is a cheerful liberal who is constantly online. Handsome and youthful, he is a serial seducer on the social networks. Ernesto, instead is a stern conservative, rigorously computerless. He is probably the last person around who still has a first-generation cell phone and his teaching methods are very traditional. They used to be best friends but an unresolved fight kept them far apart, until the day fate intervened and they found themselves teaching at the same school. Their opposite viewpoints will soon and inevitably lead to a new clash. The internet will force them to deal with their past, which resurfaces in the shape of Nina, a young woman who conducts an experiment on them: Filippo must try to leave the world of Internet and Ernesto must try to enter it.

Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.

William Franklin is a teacher who was born in Ireland and moved to the United States only to repatriate in 1939 after his leftist political views cause him to lose his job. Franklin becomes the first non-cleric instructor at St. Jude's, a school for wayward boys run by Brother John, who is a firm believer in strong discipline.

Sensitive rural town model student Steven Carter hides his gay feelings, except with his neighbor and best friend Linda. Suddenly his desperate search for partners leads to a blind date with golden boy John Dixon, bound for an Oxbridge career.

When some very creepy things start happening around school, the kids at Herrington High make the chilling discovery that confirms their worst suspicions: their teachers really are from another planet!

Four Lions tells the story of a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point. As the wheels fly off, and their competing ideologies clash, what emerges is an emotionally engaging (and entirely plausible) farce.

At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.

Despite her sheltered upbringing, Jenny is a teen with a bright future; she's smart, pretty, and has aspirations of attending Oxford University. When David, a charming but much older suitor, motors into her life in a shiny automobile, Jenny gets a taste of adult life that she won't soon forget.

It's graduation day at Huntington Hills High, and you know what that means - time to party. And not just any party, either. This one will be a night to remember, as the nerds become studs, the jocks are humiliated, and freshman crushes blossom into grown-up romance.

A dramatization, in modern theatrical style, of the life and thought of the Viennese-born, Cambridge-educated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose principal interest was the nature and limits of language. A series of sketches depict the unfolding of his life from boyhood, through the era of the first World War, to his eventual Cambridge professorship and association with Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes. The emphasis in these sketches is on the exposition of the ideas of Wittgenstein, a homosexual, and an intuitive, moody, proud, and perfectionistic thinker generally regarded as a genius.

When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson meet as boys in an English Boarding school. Holmes is known for his deductive ability even as a youth, amazing his classmates with his abilities. When they discover a plot to murder a series of British business men by an Egyptian cult, they move to stop it.

A teacher reconnects with an old student who is now an attorney representing a family who is suing the school for graduating their son who still cannot read or write. Amid the daily chaos of teaching in an inner city school, Alex Jurel tries to decide if he will lie at his deposition to protect the school or tell the truth and risk throwing away his career.

A group of archaeological students become trapped in the past when they go there to retrieve their professor. The group must survive in 14th century France long enough to be rescued.

An ambitious American fulfilling her dream of studying at Oxford falls for a charming Brit hiding a secret that may upend her perfectly planned life.

Frustrated by the hypocrisy they see in their parents, teachers, and the entire school board, an unlikely trio set out to find a common truth and make their voices heard as they revive a defunct school club and take on the world.

An illustrious British boarding school becomes a bloody battleground when a mysterious sinkhole appears at a nearby fracking site unleashing unspeakable horror.

A story about a troubled boy growing up in England, set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends, even like family. Based on experiences of director Shane Meadows.

In Moscow in 1983, an American journalist interviews Guy Bennett, who recalls his last year at public school, fifty years before, and how it contributed to him becoming a spy.

While his parents are away for the summer, 16-year-old Dani invites his best friend, the irrepressible Nico, to stay for the holidays. Jealously rears its head when Nico appears more interested in the local girls than in Dani. Hot summer nights and too many joints lead to experimentation which neither boy can talk about, a situation complicated by the appearance of the older and openly gay Julián, a published writer and old friend of Dani’s father.

Biarritz. Sixteen-year-old George, the high school hottie, falls in love with Alex. To get his attention, she initiates a group game with Alex, Nikita, Laetitia and Gabriel. They will discover, test, and push the limits of their sexuality.

Two schoolboy delinquents learn a lesson that they will never forget when a teacher at the end of his tether decides to abduct them.

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important.

A tale of the tender relationship between a twelve-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old upperclassman who is the object of his desire, all set within the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit-run school.

In post–War England, a writer and sometime-ghost hunter investigates a reported haunting at a boys boarding school.

This historical drama is an account of the early life of British politician Winston Churchill, including his childhood years, his time as a war correspondent in Africa, and culminating with his first election to Parliament.

Diagnosed with a mental illness halfway through his senior year of high school, a witty, introspective teen struggles to keep it a secret while falling in love with a brilliant classmate who inspires him to open his heart and not be defined by his condition.

Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday—drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives.

Bill and Ted are high school buddies starting a band. They are also about to fail their history class—which means Ted would be sent to military school—but receive help from Rufus, a traveller from a future where their band is the foundation for a perfect society. With the use of Rufus' time machine, Bill and Ted travel to various points in history, returning with important figures to help them complete their final history presentation.

A high school valedictorian who gets baked with the local stoner finds himself the subject of a drug test. The situation causes him to concoct an ambitious plan to get his entire graduating class to face the same fate, and fail.

A solar eclipse activates a magic time portal, and a regular schoolboy Vit'ko from the 21st century goes a thousand years back in time. It doesn’t take Vitya long to recognize the legendary bogatyrs in young Oleshko, powerful Ilya and severe Dobrynya. Their life passes in fighting cumans who try to destroy Rusichi at any cost, using both weapons and black magic. Vitya finds himself in the very midst of incredible events, battles with mythical creatures and acquires real courage.

In a high school in the outskirts of Rome, it's the last day before the summer holidays. A literature teacher reminisces the past year and wonders what will become of the students he cared for as if they were his children.

In a Japanese school, 5 adolescent geeks join the new sport teacher and take up the challenge to take part in the synchronised swimming competition, in-spite of the mockeries of the real sportsmen.

When their little cheat fails, Alain and Jean-Pierre fail their final high-school exams in English. Their parents deny them the planned vacation to the Côte d’Azur and send them instead to Ramscale in England, to improve their English. However, many other parents had the same idea, so they meet more of their own than English folks and end up more at beach parties than in class. Only with the girls do they seem to have no luck, although they desperately try...

An awkward adolescent boy and his angst-ridden friends try their best to fit in amongst a cast of varied characters.

First day of last year for the students of a high school science, but at school there is something new: some guys have been moved from their respective classes in a section created especially for them, the section H. Students of the H section are not were chosen at random, are in fact notoriously problematic elements, too exuberant and listless. Among them is Ricky who is awake and never misses a chance to make jokes irritating that it shares on its Youtube channel, Star whose only interest is its look and Viola intelligent but always at war with the world.

England, 1021. Rob Cole, a boy born in a miserable mining town, swears to become a physician and vanquish disease and death. His harsh path of many years, a quest for knowledge besieged by countless challenges and sacrifices, leads him to the remote Isfahan, in Persia, where he meets Ibn Sina, the greatest healer of his time.

Hapless Henry Palfrey is patronised by his self-important chief clerk at work, ignored by restaurant waiters, conned by shady second-hand car salesmen, and, worst of all, endlessly wrong-footed by unspeakably rotten cad Raymond Delauney who has set his cap at April, new love of Palfrey's life. In desperation Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship to learn how to best such bounders and win the girl.

A group of Catholic school friends, after being caught drawing an obscene comic book, plan a heist that will outdo their previous prank and make them local legends.

Feeling pressured to become more sexually experienced before she goes to college, Brandy Klark makes a list of things to accomplish before hitting campus in the fall.

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.

Eddie lands his first teaching gig at an inner city middle school and finds his highly pubescent pupils are receiving no form of sexual education. Eddie isn't really equipped to teach them...he's not exactly experienced romantically.

At a sizable public college, high-minded student Eddy is forced to room with the slovenly Stuart, but the pair strike up a surprising friendship. When attractive co-ed Alex is assigned to live with the two male students because of her gender-neutral name, a roundabout love triangle ensues. Eddy secretly yearns for Stuart, who wants Alex, but she prefers Eddy. The complex situation leads to sexual experimentation and strained relationships.

At Phoenix Progressive School, students take notes lying on parlor couches and are encouraged to explore their gifts through electives like break-dancing and graphic-novel writing. In the midst of all this liberal pedagogy and budding talent, Molly Maxwell feels unexceptional, until she falls for her attractive English teacher, Ben.

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.

Andrew Crocker-Harris has been forced from his position as the classics master at an English public school due to poor health. As he winds up his final term, he discovers not only that his wife, Millie, has been unfaithful to him with one of his fellow schoolmasters, but that the school's students and faculty have long disdained him. However, an unexpected act of kindness causes Crocker-Harris to re-evaluate his life's work.

Benjamin, a 16-year-old with lousy grades, switches to a boarding school in order to eventually reach grammar school. Adjusting to his new environment is difficult as he has to struggle with being a teen... specially when he falls in love to the school's dream girl, Malen.

When their beloved school is threatened with closure should the powers that be fail to raise the proper funds, the girls scheme to steal a priceless painting and use the profits to pull St. Trinian's out of the red.

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.

College student Charlie Banks has to face old problems when the bully he had an unpleasant encounter with back in high school shows up on his campus.

Honor is an ambitious high school senior whose sole focus is getting into Harvard, assuming she can first score the coveted recommendation from her guidance counselor, Mr. Calvin. Willing to do whatever it takes, Honor concocts a Machiavellian-like plan to take down her top three student competitors, until things take a turn when she unexpectedly falls for her biggest competition, Michael.

A high school student becomes convinced that the world is lost to evil and begins to challenge the morals and beliefs of the adults surrounding him.

A boy with Tourette's syndrome overcomes criticism and discrimination to achieve his dream of becoming a teacher.

Two freethinking teenagers - a boy and a girl - confront with authoritarian teachers in their boarding schools. The other students treat this differently.

The adventures of a group of Texas teens on their last day of school in 1976, centering on student Randall Floyd, who moves easily among stoners, jocks and geeks. Floyd is a star athlete, but he also likes smoking weed, which presents a conundrum when his football coach demands he sign a "no drugs" pledge.

A high-school gym teacher has big plans for the summer, but is forced to cancel them to teach a "bonehead" English class for misfit goof-off students. Fortunately, his unconventional brand of teaching fun field trips begins to connect with them, and even inspires ardor in some.

Disgusted with the policies of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell plans to take his family to the New World. But on the eve of their departure, Cromwell is drawn into the tangled web of religion and politics that will result in the English Civil War.

After his lover rejects him, Maurice attempts to come to terms with his sexuality within the restrictiveness of Edwardian society.

When Vincent finds himself a victim of outing in his high school, he must accept to live with the drastic changes it provokes, and redefine his relationships with his friends and family.

An ambitious young accountant schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman.

Despite his outstanding intellect, associate professor Charlie Thurber is a chronic underachiever and has never received university tenure. Aided by his nutty best friend, Charlie launches a final effort to make the grade at Gray College. But a beautiful new teacher whose ascending star threatens to eclipse him shakes up Charlie's plans.

Awkward teenager Charlie Bartlett has trouble fitting in at a new high school. Charlie needs some friends fast, and decides that the best way to find them is to appoint himself the resident psychiatrist. He becomes one of the most popular guys in school by doling out advice and, occasionally, medication, to the student body.

In 1931, budding author Christopher Isherwood goes to Berlin at the invitation of his friend W. H. Auden for the gay sex that abounds in the city. He falls for street sweeper Heinz, paying medical bills for the boy's sickly mother, to the disapproval of her other son, Nazi Gerhardt.

Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.

While other kids buy into countless hours of studying just so they can get a mark in some teacher's report book, Handsome Davis sees it as nothing more than a system of control over your mind. That's why Handsome and his three best friends Sammy, Victor and the cribsheet genius Applebee have banded together and found ways to cheat on their tests all through their school years.

Like all sixteen-year-olds, Leo prefers the company of friends, motorbike rides and music to school. None of the teachers seem to be able to arouse his interest until the arrival in his class of a young history and philosophy substitute who, with his modern methods, helps him see the world with different eyes. In love with Beatrice, the ethereal girl of his dreams, Leo divides the world by colours. Beatrice is the red of love but he is forced to confront his own beliefs and fears when he discovers that the girl is suffering from leukemia, a disease that he links to white, a symbol of emptiness and loss.

Naive Midwestern prep student Jonathan bonds with his more worldly roommate, Skip, who takes the small-town boy under his wing. At Skip's urging, the inexperienced Jonathan is emboldened to seek out older women in the cocktail lounges of nearby Chicago, where he meets and beds the alluring Ellen, who unfortunately turns out to be Skip's mother. The division between the friends is further deepened when a cheating scandal engulfs the school.

Over one intense day, the devoted head teacher of a last-chance reform school strives to keep his students in line while facing pressures of his own.

Kicked out by his parents, a gay teenager leaves small-town Indiana for New York's Greenwich Village, where growing discrimination against the gay community leads to riots on June 28, 1969.

When eight male cadets are left behind at an isolated military high school, the greatest romantic drama ever written seeps out of the classroom and permeates their lives.

An examination on the effect of Franco-era religious schooling and sexual abuse on the lives of two longtime friends.

Set during a long, hot summer on the Thamesmead Estate in Southeast London, where three teenagers edge towards adulthood.

Malo and Stéphane are two students who are kind of losers and have just started high school. Their plan to become popular: to host a German exchange student with a lot of style. Too bad for Malo, who gets stuck with a Goth who will make his life hell.

Two twelve-year-old boys, Romeo and Gavin, undergo an extraordinary test of character and friendship when Morell, a naive but eccentric and dangerous stranger, comes between them. Morell befriends with the two boys and later asks them to help him pursue Romeo's beautiful elder sister. He gradually becomes more violent after she rejects him.

During the 1930s in England, a group of young socialites dominate the national gossip with extravagant and outlandish antics. Among the group is the aspiring novelist Adam Fenwick-Symes, who is attempting to raise enough money to marry fellow member Nina Blount. However, after customs officials confiscate his first manuscript, Fenwick-Symes must recover from the financial setback and figure out new ways to earn money for a wedding.

An aging, down-and-out public employee must face the primary school examination.

Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dr. William Minor.

What do you dream of when you're 16-years-old and in a seaside resort in Normandy in the 1980s? A best friend? A lifelong teen pact? Scooting off on adventures on a boat or a motorbike? Living life at breakneck speed? No. You dream of death. Because you can't get a bigger kick than dying. And that's why you save it till the very end. The summer holidays are just beginning, and this story recounts how Alexis grew into himself.

Richard Clark has just left the well-known Wellington Academy to teach at Marion Barry High School. Now, he will try to inspire the D-average students into making good grades and try to woo a fellow teacher.

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.
