How good or bad a movie is/was "Sixteen Candles"?

Cafe Society
21

I was a junior in high school. I went with some friends to see it. They laughed a little. I didn’t laugh at all, and wanted to leave before it was over, But I’d driven everyone in my father’s spacious 72 Chevelle Malibu, and they convinced me to stay.

Kind wish I’d put my foot down and made everybody leave.

We went to this coffee shop afterward, and all kind of agreed that it was a bad movie, but some people thought it was “campy,” leading to a heated discussion of the definition of “camp.”

A couple of people who liked it had a sense that it wouldn’t age well, but didn’t put it quite that way. There were still movies that weren’t really meant to age-- they were meant to be made cheaply, relative for Hollywood, make a lot of money right away, and then go away-- you laughed at the jokes once, and didn’t remember them.

I think this was true-- there were still people in 1984 who didn’t have cable, or VCRs, believe it or not, and even people who did who still joined the large market for new movies that didn’t have lots of special effects or lavish sets.

John Hughes fame-- and Molly Ringwald’s a little, as well as fame after the movie for some of the actors in it, has kept it in the public eye. But it’s a little like having an SNL skit about the Bush-Clinton-Perot election in your face every evening in 2023.

Which is not to say the film was relevant in 1984, but it was believable. People believed it was common for foreigners to have names that meant something embarrassing in English-- jokes about it were pretty common, although the sexual content wasn’t always there. People believed a 16th birthday could be forgotten, because they believed a child could be forgotten (Home Alone was 6 years in the future). This was years before helicopter parenting and stranger danger.

When I thought the film was stupid, it was not for the reasons that it’s cited as stupid now. I thought the main character was vapid. I thought the central romance was derivative-- and not very believable anyway. And, believe it or not, I thought the Asian character’s name was awful for being sexual, but not for being a bad pun in the first place. I was just glad he was played by an actual Asian actor, and not Mickey Rooney in fake Buck teeth. Progress!

It also just wasn’t the type of movie that would ever appeal to me.

22

I’ve seen it, and I don’t really like it. I’ve enjoyed Hughes’ other films, such as Ferris Bueller and The Breakfast Club, and while those now seem dated (to me, anyway), Planes, Trains, and Automobiles will always be fun at any time.

But Sixteen Candles is worlds away from Ferris Bueller and Breakfast Club. It seems more like a contractual obligation than anything else.

23

How does Ringwald’s other starring vehicle in a John Hughes movie, ‘Pretty in Pink’, hold up in terms of racial and sexual attitudes that are now very cringey? I was never a big fan of either movie, and I think I’ve only seen bits and pieces of that and ‘Sixteen Candles’ on cable over the years, so in my mind I kind of conflate both movies.

24

Good question, the movie was so forgettable for me I forgot James Spader and Annie Potts were even in it.

At least they changed the ending from Molly’s character ending up with Duckie. The Jon Cryer character was terrible as I recall. Kind of stalkerish and creepy as I recall. But my memories are vague and I don’t recall much about the Blane character played by Andrew McCarthy. I feel like he was more of a prop than a character.

25

What they said, too. Hughes was most likely not trying to make an artistic statement for the Ages.

26

Of course, John Hughes liked the original ending so much he ended up remaking it with the leads gender-swapped a year later in Some Kind of Wonderful. I think with thirty years under the bridge, we feel a little more comfortable with stalkerish tendencies shown by female characters Plus, you get a little more detail of Watts’ interior life than Duckie’s.

I think Blane has one of those Dickensian names - you know, one letter away from “bland” - which, before the reshoots, is how he was supposed to be.

27

Most modern reads of the movie now are firmly in the she should have ended up with Duckie camp*. Ive never heard him described as stalkerish or creepy. He’s a friend who is clearly in love with her but he’s her friend first. Maybe he’s a little jealous at one point…but also he’s right about Blaine at that point.

*…well those who don’t see Duckie as Queer-coded.

28

As someone in the prime John Hughes years, I thought SKoW was a much better movie than PiP. Mary Stuart Masterson was a much better foil than Jon Cryer.

29

Can’t help but think, the gender-swap itself made that ending a much easier sell even at the time. Teen romance films were about the girl being made happy by getting the boy. And yes, the character is better developed.

OTOH see the above about the trope expectation of the teen romance genre of the time, which is why I can fully understand the preview reactions issue with PinP. And come to think of it, it is clear that he “is clearly in love with her but he’s her friend first”, but then that would affect the test audiences in that they would expect explicit affirmation that this was something selfless.

30

I’m on Team Duckie.

Test audiences apparently wanted a romance novel ending, not a good ending. Bland may be good arm candy, but he isn’t going to be much of a boyfriend. He’ll ignore her. Cheat on her. Maybe with guys. But she’ll never realize she made the wrong choice.

31

He’s right about Blaine, but Ducky’s the living embodiment of the horrible “friendzone” trope. I loved Ducky for his style (and expounded on my love for the character when I ran into Jon Cryer back in 1998) but he’s hard to watch now, without being kind of glad he’s pre-internet and hence not able to be lured into an Incel chat room. He does wind up with Kristy Swanson at the end, though (and she turned into a MAGA-head in recent years…are none of my teen icons safe?).

32

I wish I could remember the article, but I read one where the author was going over many of those classic movies from the 80s and remarked that, at the time, there was very dialogue let alone objections to the content of those movies. And that makes a lot of sense because such things were simply socially acceptable to the majority of Americans back then.

A few years back I re-watched the Monster Squad for the first time since 1987 and I was taken about by the vitriolic, homophobic dialgue between a few of the characters in reference to one of their teachers. I remembered that Wolfman had nards but the homophobic dialogue had been completely forgotten.

33

The film is about the awkwardness of puberty and being a teen, those are timeless. I haven’t been a teen since the mid 90’s but I saw Sixteen Candles fairly recently and I think it still works even though it’s 40 years old.

I’d go through it all point by point, but it’s a John Hughes comedy from the 80’s. It is still watchable decades later and that is already above and beyond most comedies of this era. People are asking too much of it.

34

In 1984 I loved Sixteen Candles, but then I was only 34.
I watched it quite a few times for the next couple of years before kind of forgetting about it. Nowadays I agree with all the criticisms and misgivings about it — in hindsight I realize I’d been noticing those things without them really registering.
(I do still think Anthony Michael Hall’s performance was excellent.)

35

We had a whole thread on movies that couldn’t be made today. The upshot was that they could. Certainly changes would be made for the current environment, nobody tries to fill their movies with outdated references and even period pieces make adjustments to suit the current audience.

Just in case anyone thinks these movies couldn’t be made today I recently saw one of the few major movies released this year that was full of incest references, gratuitous nudity, underage drinking, attempted rape by deception, and other offenses I probably forgot about. I suppose it slipped past the censors because it starred the world’s highest paid actress and a winner of a Best Actress Oscar Jennifer Lawrence, but clearly 40 years from now people will consider this kind of film unacceptable.

36

I find that very, very few movies I enjoyed in the early/mid 80’s have held up well at all. Whereas movies from earlier periods would acquire a “classic” patina over time, even as cult or ironic classics, I get none of that from watching 80’s movies. The Empire Strikes Back holds up fairly well on rewatch, I think mainly because it was high-level talent with modest aspirations. Raiders of the Lost Ark of course is an exception, being the best film of all time. Apart from that, I find the earlier 80’s memorable but not durable.

Things start to get better around 87-88, but I tend to lump those in with the early 90’s.

37

This sort of thing always strikes me as being very male-gazey, The implication is always that Duckie DESERVES her love. That’s not how love works, though. Women are not deserved prizes. “The nice guy” often is really “the passive aggressive feels-entitled guy.”

38

Well, we don’t know that. That is just a cultural bias that has entrenched against that particular character type. In the universe of the story, Andie gets who/what she wanted, Blane turns out to be a decent fellow after all, Duckie proves himself a True Friend™ and gets a nice girl of his own ex-machina’ed at him, and they all live Happily Until Senior Year (maybe) before they all move on to college.

Plus that would require turning Duckie into the protagonist of the story.

39

I think you’re reading way too much into my comment.

In the context of the movie, at the time of the end of the movie, she should have ended up with Ducky. Whether THAT relationship would last is not the point of the film. (I suspect it wouldn’t. He’d be all clingy and nice-guy-y). She was clearly making the shallow choice choosing Bland. Whether Ducky was the best choice, isn’t my point.

No one knows where romance movies go after the credits role. That’s not the point of a romance film. You’re not supposed to think about that.

“…and those that had the potential, lived happily ever after.”