Now this is more like it! After kinda getting a little down from watching PRETTY IN PINK, I revisited SIXTEEN CANDLES and now I feel awesome! I think I'm gonna go party with the Donger, put a pizza on a record player, dance to some Oingo Boingo and wreck my Rolls Royce.
Average high school teenager Molly Ringwald is superbummed that her family is so wrapped up planning her older sister's wedding that they forgot her 16th birthday. Even worse, the hunk that she's secretly in love with doesn't even know she exist...or does he? One thing's for sure though: the local geek/wannabe stud knows that she exists and he hits on her nonstop.
I'm not sure if SIXTEEN CANDLES is the single best 80's high school movie or not, but it's up there. It's certainly one of the most influential, right along side FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and THE BREAKFAST CLUB. I know for me as a sexy teenager in the 80's I watched the fuck out of this movie. Watching it again now after not seeing it for a number of years I was kinda surprised at how well it's aged. I was also impressed by the intricacies of Anthony Michael Hell's performance. He was really good. Were all of those little touches instructed by John Hughes or did he just do them? Like when he knocked over that loaded down rack of car parts and in an effort to rectify the situation he moves that one little part over closer to the larger pile. Haha.
SIXTEEN CANDLES might not be for the more grumpier members of the No Fun Club who point out things like, whenever the great Long Duk Dong appears on screen you here a gong clanging or some of the more cruder sexual comments. I just look of it as an ugly product of the times and that's how people talk.
A wide cast full of great characters, tons of quotable lines and memorable scenes, 80's fashion overload, otto-mo-biiiles, superfast pace without a single dead scene, shower scene, expensive floppy disks, headgear on. Highly, highly recommended.
