Ah, John Hughes. The man behind The Breakfast Club, She’s Having a Baby, and other slice of life films about adolescence, coming of age, or general human situations started his directing career with 1984’s classic coming of age comedy Sixteen Candles. The movie that would turn Molly Ringwald into a household name was a movie that focused on what teens across America worried about: acceptance, love, and high school. With loads of similar films in the 80s, Sixteen Candles might be the most critically acclaimed for its charm and for its general lack of raunchiness.
The tagline reads “It’s the time of your life that may last a lifetime.” Hughes tries to capture the venerable idea that high school seems to last evermore. Today, that idea seems more ubiquitous than ever as kids scuttle up the social ladder right through high school with worry and angst. Many still live in a “high school” world, too, as a trip down memory lane would point towards. Reputation is an important issue among many people, so the themes in films like Sixteen Candles have a common appeal. As long as humans fight to be noticed (or not to be noticed), movies will always survey the meaning behind it.
Ringwald stars as Samantha Baker and the movie begins as she wakes up on her sixteenth birthday. Ginny (Blanche Baker), Samantha’s sister, is taking all of the attention off of Samantha due to her imminent wedding and the birthday is forgotten about. Samantha heads to school, struggling with the idea that her parents forgot the most significant day of her life, and is incessantly plagued both by her ongoing fascination with Jake Ryan (Michael Shoeffling) and the advances of The Geek (Anthony Michael Hall). The film moves through the day as Samantha tries to get Jake to notice her and tries to fend off the advances of The Geek.
The supporting cast is very enjoyable. Paul Dooley is great as Samantha’s father, providing some clever balance to the film’s bedlam and participating in one of the most crucial scenes in a father-daughter talk. Gedde Watanabe as Long Duk Dong pretty much exists for a little racially-tinged comic relief, but he’s pleasant nevertheless. The grandparents, as played by Edward Andrews, Billie Bird, Carole Cook, and Max Showalter, fit the stereotypes nicely and give Ringwald a lot to play with. The opening sequence with Samantha and her grandparents is a riotous example of the chemistry the cast has.
Sixteen Candles does begin to falter slightly towards its climax and does seem shaky in some moments, but it is a good film overall. Hughes treats the teen comedy with esteem and demonstrates a capacity to listen to the characters. Instead of using teens as a gratuitous setup for bawdy behaviour and comic generalizations, Hughes sets up a dreadful situation in the forgetting of a girl’s sixteenth birthday and takes things logically from there. One great example of this ability to listen is in the scene in which The Geek and Samantha have a discussion in the car in the auto shop at school. Once The Geek gets over his sex-crazed dogma, the pair starts to truly have a conversation about life, fear, and the need for friends. It’s a moment that would often be overlooked in other teen films.
Ringwald is the model centerpiece for the story, too. She provides terrific reactions and delivers her lines exactly how they should be delivered. She’s a teen, not an actress, and it’s important that this comes across on the screen. In a day and age where teens in movies are played by performers in their late-20s to early-30s, it’s invigorating to see a classic in which the performances resound with precision and attention to detail. Ringwald was actually 16 during the making of the film, so that helps a great deal in capturing the energy required. She was a natural and has since gone on to become one of the most renowned “teen” actresses.
Sixteen Candles works because it produces enough lovability and sincerity per square inch of comedy that it matches the subtle balance required to make a teen comedy work. Instead of providing wall-to-wall nudity and mechanical sex jokes involving characters with no prudence or profundity, Hughes’ film delivers an honest story centered around dialogue that reflects how teens actually talk and a plot that focuses in on how they think. It’s a film with feeling and that’s worth an awful lot in the teen comedy genre.
8/10
Trailer (the trailer does cut off near the end, so I’m looking for a better one):
