Sixteen Candles

SIXTEEN CANDLES

John Hughes was the Shakespeare of teenage angst.  That doesn't mean he turned high-school drama into high art.  In fact, Shakespeare's (and Hughes') real gift was the ability to play to the masses, to turn the medium into a mouthpiece that entertained the underserved.   Fast Times at Ridgemont High might have gotten there first, but Sixteen Candles dulled the blade with sweetness and sentimentality, revealing a hormonally charged jungle of dorks, dweebs, queens and jocks.   Bouncing between them all is Samantha (Molly Ringwald), a flat-chested, self-conscious sophomore with eyes for the most popular guy in school, but also a sexual magnet for one particularly ambitious nerd. 

Ringwald's #MeToo inspired article in the New Yorker from 2018 was a slap in the face to many fans who found retroactively criticizing the late filmmaker for social faux pas was taking things too far.  But watching Sixteen Candleswith fresh eyes, Hughes' misogynistic - and racial - blind spots are hard to swallow; in particular, Anthony Michael Hall's sexual conquest of a blind-drunk homecoming queen who admits "she enjoyed it" after the fact.  The scene is cringingly inappropriate now...and should have been then.  

But that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Yes, Hughes is quick toss in a Lampoon-style gag, but he softens the blow by creating teenage characters with real depth and emotions.   Samantha's forgotten birthday is only a symptom of a larger problem, one so elegantly phrased by the great '80s poet Will Smith:  Parents Just Don't Understand.   In Sixteen Candles, most of the adults are bumbling, overworked, self-absorbed (or completely absent) morons so lost in their own problems they couldn't possibly understand the subtle psychological warfare of high school politics.  

But Hughes can and does. And that's why his films speak to an audience that was simply waiting for a sympathetic ear.  Sixteen Candles might not be nearly the laugh riot it was in our memories, but the characters he created have stood the test of time...even if some of the jokes have not.

Arrow Video's Blu-ray collector's edition should really be the last word as far as home video editions go (the extended scene is remastered too and included as a longer version of the film and also separately from the theatrical version).  With a new 4K restoration from the original negative, the transfer is the best yet and comes with a huge slate of old and new extras.  There's new interviews with Gedde Watanabe and his "sexy girlfriend" Deborah Pollack, casting director Jackie Burch, oily bohunk John Kapelos, camera operator Gary Kibbe, filmmaker Adam Rifkin (who shadowed Hughes on set), and composer Iran Newborn.  A new video appreciation that views the film through a feminist perspective goes along with an archival documentary, trailers, image galleries, PDF of the script and illustrated collector's booklet.

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