John Hughes was a celebrated director, producer, and writer. Which of the following movies directed by Mr. Hughes would you say is your favorite?
Sixteen Candles
The Breakfast Club
Weird Science
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
She’s Having A Baby
Uncle Buck
Curly Sue
This is ONLY about the movies he DIRECTED. There’s a much longer list of films he produced and/or wrote, and maybe that will come later, but for now we’re only talking about these 8 films.
I’ll go with FBDO.
Weird Science. That’s the one film of his that I actually like. All the rest are “bleh” to “active loathing.” But WS is just fun.
For me it’s close between Ferris Bueller and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but if I had to choose only one, my gut says Planes.
Wow going into the thread I had an answer in my head and then read the choices and it was not as definite as I first thought. Lots of good movies.
I was going to say Some Kind of Wonderful but it turns out he wrote that one, but didn’t direct it. Of those listed, I guess Sixteen Candles. I liked it as a teen, but don’t really care for it anymore. The others I either saw and didn’t care for, or saw but don’t really remember, or never saw.
For me it is a coin toss between The Breakfast Club & Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Me, too, but I came down on the side of FBDO.
I actively despise Sixteen Candles.
Sixteen Candles has aged terribly.
Planes, Trains, & Automobiles is clearly the best for me. I just find the whole thing so funny.
I voted for Ferris. But, I ran across Uncle Buck last night, on AMC, which I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Unlike, say, Sixteen Candles (which, I agree, has aged very poorly, even though I really enjoyed it back in the '80s), Uncle Buck is still pretty funny, and the little kids are still adorable.
Breakfast Club. I was a senior in high school and it really hit home. My school want nearly that cliquey, but the general sense of alienation and putting up a false front rang true.
I voted for “Couldn’t choose just one”, though my favorites are Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
If I absolutely had to choose just one of those, Planes, Trains and Automobiles would win. Love me some John Candy.
Out of the ones I’ve seen, I picked Ferris Bueller just a notch above Uncle Buck. Weird Science is dead-ass last.
See, I regard FBDO as a Crime Against Humanity, and know that Hughes will be spending the next few eons in Purgatory because of it.
I voted that I couldn’t pick just one. I love Breakfast Club and FBDO. The rest of the list isn’t too shabby, either.
Exactly. Good, goofy fun, with the added bonus of being the only John Hughes movie which had Chet in it.
The Breakfast Club. As a distillation of a specific moment in time for high school it was almost photorealistic in my experience.
Ferris Bueller, on the other hand, was a celebratory, non-realistic encouragement to be a dick.
And Planes, Trains and Automobiles was just mean-spirited and unfunny, even when I was a kid.
I had to pick Sixteen Candles because I think it was the first one I watched but it really is a tie between Ferris, Uncle Buck & Breakfast Club as well. Sixteen Candles has aged badly and is pretty questionable but I still love it. Uncle Buck is probably one of the funniest movies ever made.
The Breakfast Club, remarkable as it may have been at the time, is absolutely unwatchable for me now. Maybe it’s because the dialogue is so cheesy, maybe because it’s so genuinely high school. Either way, I can’t sit through that shit.
Ferris Bueller, on the other hand, still captures my interest and makes me laugh out loud whenever it’s on, even if I don’t seek it out.
But PT&A makes me laugh out loud and it’s something I still actually look forward to watching every Thanksgiving night.
Uncle Buck made (makes) me laugh, but isn’t anything special, IMO. It falls into the category of Adventures in Babysitting, Teen Wolf, the Burbs, Funny Farm and The Great Outdoors. Just a basic 80s movie.
The rest: I don’t think I’ve seen any of them from front to finish, but have definitely seen a majority of each of those movies on cable over the years, just picking up scenes here and there. None of them piqued my interest enough for anything more than that.