The Best YA Movies on Tubi for Every Kind of Main Character
Crushes get complicated, friendships get messy, and growing up remains deeply unserious in these teen and coming-of-age movies.
Teen movies really gave us unrealistic expectations. Where was our dramatic hallway entrance? Our perfectly timed makeover? Our enemies-to-lovers arc? Instead, most of us got questionable haircuts, crushes who took four business days to text back, and at least one interaction that still randomly resurfaces at 2 a.m.
Luckily, the movies did all that growing up for us and Tubi has plenty of them ready for a rewatch, first watch, or “wait, they’re in this?” discovery. These YA movies free on Tubi bounce from first loves and high school hierarchies to college growing pains, magical birthdays, and the occasional teenage witch situation. We’ve already investigated the unwritten rules of surviving a teen drama, but consider these 10 movies your chance to put that knowledge to the test.
Need an even bigger syllabus? Tubi’s The YA Edit keeps the rabbit hole going with more teen romances, coming-of-age movies, high school comedies, and stories where one semester somehow contains enough drama for an entire lifetime. Your next teen movie night has officially been assigned.
Another Cinderella Story
Before Selena Gomez was navigating Only Murders, she had a much more pressing mystery to solve: how do you find your masked-ball crush when the only clue left behind is a Zune?
Gomez plays aspiring dancer Mary Santiago in Another Cinderella Story, a 2008 remix of the fairy tale where glass slippers are replaced by an MP3 player and Prince Charming is pop star Joey Parker, played by Andrew Seeley. Between secret identities, dance-offs, an evil guardian, and enough peak-2000s fashion to revive your old mood board, this is Cinderella through the Disney-era teen-movie filter. The nostalgia alone could power the stereo, but Gomez and Seeley’s dance-floor chemistry is what makes this one worth pressing play again.
Sidelined 2: Intercepted
Getting the guy was only Chapter One. Now somebody has to survive the relationship.
Noah Beck returns as quarterback Drayton alongside Siena Agudong’s Dallas in Tubi Original Sidelined 2: Intercepted, where college puts their romance through a very YA stress test. Drayton has football. Dallas has dance. Both have futures that don't necessarily fit neatly into the same plan. The sequel trades some of the first movie's will-they-won't-they butterflies for the messier question of okay, we're together…now what? Add football-season energy, long-distance growing pains, and two people who occasionally need to JUST. TALK. TO. EACH. OTHER., and the QB-and-dancer agenda remains very much alive. Drayton and Dallas have been through enough that, yes, we also have the full Sidelined 2: Intercepted case file waiting for anyone already emotionally invested.
The Duff
Bianca Piper was having a perfectly acceptable senior year until someone introduced her to four letters that absolutely ruined her evening.
Mae Whitman brings her signature deadpan charm to Bianca in The DUFF, a smart, funny teenager who discovers her classmates have labeled her the “Designated Ugly Fat Friend.” Enter Robbie Amell as Wesley, the popular jock recruited to help Bianca navigate the high school food chain, and Bella Thorne as Madison, who treats queen-bee status like a full-time position with benefits. The movie has all the makeover-comedy ingredients, but its real glow-up is Bianca realizing that the labels everyone assigns in high school aren't nearly as important as they pretend to be. Very 2015. Weirdly timeless.
Kissing Is the Easy Part
Nothing says romance quite like academic pressure and a secret arrangement with somebody's parents. Cupid has apparently updated his methods.
In Tubi Original Kissing Is the Easy Part, Asher Angel plays ambitious Sean opposite Paris Berelc’s much more unpredictable Flora. Their unlikely arrangement puts two completely different students in each other's orbit until, of course, feelings refuse to follow the original terms and conditions. Angel and Berelc give the opposites-attract setup plenty of spark, while the college pressure underneath it adds a very real question to all that flirting: what happens when falling for somebody wasn't included in your five-year plan? Their romance also earned its own deeper dive into why Kissing Is the Easy Part gets first love so right, because apparently one secret deal wasn't enough for us either.
Mean Girls
We know. Putting Mean Girls on a best-teen movie list is about as controversial as saying Regina George probably shouldn't be trusted with your secrets. But the evidence is overwhelming.
Lindsay Lohan's Cady Heron walks into an American high school for the first time in Mean Girls and discovers a social ecosystem considerably more dangerous than anything she encountered growing up in Africa. Then Rachel McAdams struts in as Regina George and cinema gains one of its great teen villains. Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Chabert complete the Plastics, Tina Fey's script supplies approximately 700 quotes you've accidentally incorporated into your vocabulary, and October 3 has belonged to this movie ever since. Twenty-plus years later, Mean Girls doesn't need a comeback. It never left.
16 Wishes
At 16, Abby Jensen has a plan. Not a vague plan. A laminated-in-her-mind, years-in-the-making, 16-wishes plan. Respect the commitment.
Debby Ryan brings her Disney-era charm to Abby in 16 Wishes, whose birthday list starts magically coming true one wish at a time. At first, this is obviously excellent news. Then the universe reminds her that wording matters and teenage wish fulfillment comes with some pretty aggressive fine print. Magical candles, friendship drama, high school popularity, and the very relatable realization that the life you imagined at 12 might not actually fit you at 16 make this pure comfort-watch territory. Somebody cue the nostalgia.
New York Minute
One Olsen twin has a schedule. The other has a band. New York City has absolutely no intention of cooperating with either.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen take Manhattan in New York Minute as polar-opposite sisters Roxy and Jane Ryan, whose supposedly straightforward trip into the city spirals into missed plans, unexpected detours, and peak early-2000s chaos. Ashley's Jane is chasing a college opportunity while Mary-Kate's Roxy has her own agenda, giving the movie a sister-comedy engine underneath all the running around Manhattan. The outfits alone deserve their own Pinterest board, but the Olsen chemistry makes this more than a Y2K time capsule. Sometimes your soulmate is just the sister currently ruining your itinerary.
Words on Bathroom Walls
Adam wants to graduate, become a chef, and keep one deeply personal part of his life from defining how everyone sees him. High school, famously known for respecting privacy, has other plans.
Charlie Plummer gives Adam a sharp sense of humor and vulnerability in Words on Bathroom Walls as the teenager adjusts to a schizophrenia diagnosis while trying to finish school. Taylor Russell plays Maya, the brilliant classmate who gradually gets past the walls Adam has built around himself, and their chemistry gives the movie a tender romance without treating love like a magical cure. This is one of the heavier entries on our list, but that's precisely what gives it its place: growing up isn't always about finding yourself. Sometimes it's about trusting someone enough to let yourself be seen.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
Being 16 is confusing enough without finding out your family conveniently forgot to mention that you're a witch.
Melissa Joan Hart picks up the broom as Sabrina Sawyer in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the 1996 movie that arrived before the beloved TV series. Sabrina has a new school, a new crush, and newly discovered magical powers that make ordinary teenage problems considerably less ordinary. It's cozy, campy, aggressively '90s, and basically made for that first hint of fall when your brain decides everything should suddenly involve witches. Bonus evidence for the pop-culture historians: a young Ryan Reynolds is here too. Yes, that Ryan Reynolds.
You Can Live Forever
Some first loves change your plans. Jaime and Marike's forces them to question the lives they've been told they're supposed to want.
Set in the 1990s, You Can Live Forever introduces Anwen O'Driscoll as Jaime, a gay teenager sent to live with her Jehovah's Witness relatives, where she meets Marike, played by June Laporte. Their connection grows within a community where acting on it carries consequences neither can simply ignore. The film lets that tension breathe, giving their romance the uncertainty and intensity of realizing you've found someone important before you've figured out what you're willing to change to keep them. It’s a very different flavor of the butterflies, bad timing, and big feelings we explored in our guide to first love movies on Tubi.
Among the bigger names on this list, consider this the one worth discovering before everybody else does.