The real late 80s, watch and then judge retro movies and shows yourself:

I'd say basically anybody who plans to set any show or movie back in the late '80s really, realllly needs to watch this stuff so you don't make the typical mistakes.

You know, I've seen so much going back and forth over the years on so many different forums over whether this or that show or movie realistically showed the 80s or even just about what it was like, so I finally, to maybe end it all (LOL), went and sped through a few videos and marked out a bunch of clips to finally answer the question for real, by going back to the 80s.

At least for the shows and movies that focused on HS and college simply watch all of the stuff I've marked below and then compare and decide for yourself.

If you want one of the best views of what typical suburban '80s were really, truly like, including with how people actually really looked, dressed and acted, the whole vibe, just watch these clips from 3-4 videos actually from suburban High School life in the late '80s.

Also watch the one near the end from a Florida convenience store where some kids were messing around and filming at night that gets the 80s down fairly well, heck the guy even sounds like Ferris Bueller.

I also talked on a few that I was quickly able to find from malls, even not necessarily the best, not much real footage from the 80s mallrat era seems to exist.

One thing I'll say is that most shows and movies that get set back there tend to way underdo the hair and often overdo everything else. Everyone one like Take Me Home Tonight that wasn't really that off, still refused to quite go there with the hair enough.

In most particular, some claim that KStew was styled and written to act like so totally 80s in Adventureland and some say that movie got that stuff down more perfectly than anything else ever has because it didn't overdo the main two leads, well....

Anyway, watch these clips and then compare to various shows and movies and judge for yourself....

If you go through all of these clips you'll have your answer and then you can compare this or that movie or TV set back in that time and make up your own mind how well they got it down or not (although do keep in mind all but one of these videos is from school so it doesn't show out of school clothes much or life at the shore and boardwalk and such (for the latter, think bright colors, lots of go-go shorts on the girls and bright crop tops, off shoulder crop tops, daisy dukes and for the guys mostly t-shirts, some polo shirts, occasionally "wife-beaters" and often shorts that were a lot less baggy and long than typically worn today by guys, etc.)):

1987:
Now obviously people didn't go around doing this every minute haha, this was just planned for kicks, but it does show the fun, who cares if it's silly spirit of the 80s and the looks and hair styles and clothes etc.:
(the first 2 minutes are all about the same, so after a little of that you can skip to 2:00 and then watch the rest to save time)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kshE2qqyq90

Now these are all very long videos so I quickly scanned through and created links to various parts to let you quickly get a good sampling of all sorts of things 80s (they keep going forever, but if you stop where I marked out in the text below for each segment, you'll have gotten the entire gist of everything that happens in that segment):

1988:
(2:11-2:47):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=2m11s

(2:48-4:30):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=2m48s

(9:18-11:30):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=9m18s

(19:38-21:13):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=19m38s

(26:23-26:45):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=26m23s

(46:15-49:09):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=46m15s

(49:10-52:15):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=49m11s

(53:42-54:20):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=53m42s

(55:51-56:40):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=55m51s

more 1988:
(2:00-3:00):
https://youtu.be/UM4tls4P6Gc?t=1m59s

(7:38-7:45):
https://youtu.be/UM4tls4P6Gc?t=7m41s

(25:45-26:40):
https://youtu.be/UM4tls4P6Gc?t=25m45s

1989:
(0:00-0:20):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1s

(2:38-3:40):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=2m38s

(10:17-12:25):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=10m17s

(13:06-14:08):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=13m6s

(15:16-15:40):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=15m16s

(19:35-21:54):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=19m35s

(1:06:09-1:07:35):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1h6m9s

(1:14:20-1:17:16):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1h14m20s

(1:17:17-1:18:00):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1h17m19s

(50:03-52:00):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=50m3s

more 1989:
(0:27-1:20):
https://youtu.be/wYur75DflPU?t=27s

(2:00-3:00):
https://youtu.be/wYur75DflPU?t=2m2s

Some kids filming at night in a Florida 7-11 in 1987 where you can here a lot of talking, gets the 80s pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA

also, since lots of 80s life centered on the mall, even though these are not really the best overviews or clearest views, the best I could find quickly:

(also don't mistake the accents in the first three here as some 80s thing, it's just the first one was filmed in the southern Midwest, so it's just a regional accent and music from there, and the middle two were filmed in a mall just outside of Boston and so it's just the local Boston accent which also used to be considerably stronger back then in the 80s, it's still there today, although a lot of the more suburban kids and some others have partially lost it these days, anyway it's just very regional things when it comes to accents in the first three and nothing to do with the 80s in general at all.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W54i8i_sSvM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNMwLsy80-c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHJTyDCSXa4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsIFgDTPvBM