Director: John Hughes
“Sixteen Candles” is the film that launched the prolific directorial career of the late John Hughes, who would go onto direct such films as “The Breakfast Club”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, and “Trains, Planes, and Automobiles”. It’s a beloved classic, a time capsule that represents the fashionable nostalgia of the 1980′s as well as Madonna, the Atari 2600, or Transformers.
Before there was Judd Apatow, there was John Hughes – a genius with a keen eye on the way teenagers talked, dressed, and loved. While other movies from the period, like “Porky’s”, weren’t much more than softcore porn for hormonal teenagers, the Hughes films shed light on both the high-points and the miseries of typical high school life.
Watching it in 2009, it’s clear that it’s dated – not just the outfits and the slang, but some of the broad comedy that isn’t nearly as satisfying as it once was. Children of the 80′s and 90′s probably look back fondly on the stereotypical foreign exchange student, Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe), but today it’s clear that it’s shamelessly offensive and everything but funny. The hateful comedy also stretches to cameo performances, like a young Joan Cusack who exists only to struggle with a neck brace. While “The Breakfast Club” utilized it’s archetypes successfully, “Sixteen Candles” is a bit unmemorable due to some of it’s tired gags that poke fun at, not embrace, the many faces of high school students.
It’s Samantha Baker’s (Molly Ringwald) sixteenth birthday, and nothing is going right. Her older sister (Blanche Baker) is marrying a dull Italian boy, and in the chaos of the week leading up to the wedding her parents have forgotten her birthday. She continues to lust after the dreamy senior, Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), who doesn’t know she exists, and meanwhile is forced to fend off the advances of the obnoxious and completely oblivious “geek” (Anthony Michael Hall).
The film has a bit of an identity crisis. There’s a beautiful scene that’s become quite a classic in which the geek and Samantha have a tender conversation in an auto shop. Later on, however, after revealing much of his inner turmoils – the geek goes back to molesting the prom queen (Haviland Morris) for pictures. The film has a lot of the wonderful drama of “The Breakfast Club”, but the raunchy comedy sets everything off balance. At times these kids act like fully imagined three-dimension figures, and at other times they’re simply pawns to set up the next joke.
We’ve seen many knock-offs of “Sixteen Candles” since it’s release in 1984, and therefore it’s hard to grasp it’s innovation on a genre. Though it hasn’t aged remarkably well, “Sixteen Candles” should be remembered as the pioneer of teen comedies for adults.
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