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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Good 80's movie
Great coming of age movie. "No more yanky my wanky. Donger need food"
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A Second-Tier Teen Flick from the '80s Makes a First-Rate Nostalgia Film.
Teen movies since the mid-1990s seem to be aimed at audiences other than teenagers. There are the improbable tragicomedies about dating that depict high school as pre-teens would imagine it, a grander, racier version of junior high school. And there are the films that pretend to realism by making teens out to be childish and innocuous, the way that middle-aged people like to imagine them. With some art house exceptions, the characters resemble aliens more than they do any young people who ever lived. This unfortunate state of cinema made me think more kindly of the second-tier teen flicks of the 1980s that didn't capture my interest the first time around. "Sixteen Candles" is one of those.
Written and directed by John Hughes in 1984, "Sixteen Candles" preceded his more sophisticated and thoughtful teen classics "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". But "Sixteen Candles" rings true to the culture of upper-middle class suburban teens in the 1980s. The simple, silly premise sets up a funny two days in the life of one frustrated young woman. Samantha Baker's (Molly Ringwald) family has forgotten her 16th birthday amid preparations for her sister's wedding. She has a crush on handsome senior Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) but seems only to attract the attentions of a persistent nerd (Anthony Michael Hall). Sam's grandparents have moved into her bedroom, and she' s been saddled with their exchange student (Gedde Watanabe).
"Sixteen Candles" enjoys teenagers and sympathizes with them. In this case, angst stems from being ignored on one hand and harassed on the other. The characters are genuine and nice and flawed and self-aware, a welcome relief from the current trend to portray teens as either stupid or dangerous. Those who lived through the 1980s will recognize some teen staples, like "open parties". Those who didn't might be pleasantly surprised by an era when parents were respectful, not controlling, toward their children and people worried a lot less. "Sixteen Candles" is more of a "chick flick" than some of John Hughes other teen movies, as it has a female lead. But it's a fun blast from the past. The Universal 2003 DVD offers captioning in English and subtitles in Spanish and French.
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Ultimate Girly High School Movie Must Have
This movie is dear to me. It tackles puberty, jocks, geeks, the most popular guy in school, crushes, the high school dance, you name it! Every ordinary high school girl can relate to Molly Ringwald's character.
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a ture 80's movie
i'm a fan of alot of 80 movies and Sixteen Candles is a total 80s movie. its a great movie because it has Molly Ringwald and Anthony Micheal Hall it it.
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Classic is both racist and sexist.
I think I first watched this movie when I was 13. I found it all right then, though the main plot line of the popular boy falling for the gawky younger girl fell a little flat even then. Upon watching it again at the age of 20, I found several aspects of it to be offensive. First there is the pretty horrific Asian stereotype which really isn't even funny. It mostly reminded me of the way Michael Scott from The Office might behave if he were trying to imitate someone who was Asian. Then there is a scene which is slightly less obvious and is therefore even more dangerous: in it, the popular boy who the gawky girl is lusting over hands over his very drunk popular girlfriend to the geeky guy and basically says, "Yeah man, have a good time". This is dangerous because it mirrors a lot of real life situations. I mean, did they seriously not realize this was rape in the '80s?
I suppose if the story was well written overall it could be salvaged in spite of these huge missteps, but like I said before, there isn't nearly enough development of the Sam/Jake story for me to really invest anything in it or find it believable. This goes 10 times for the extremely odd pairing of the popular girl and the geek. The dialog between them the morning after and her break up with Jake was the sappiest, least believable tripe in the entire movie. I'm going to basically discount all of the stereotypical high school stuff because this is probably among the movies that started all that anyway. At its core it's a mediocre teenage movie with a cast that lack diversity and a script that lacks class.
