Sixteen Candles
/I can't believe this. They f****** forgot my birthday.
~ Samantha
quick fox: D
winding dragon
I get the impression from watching ’80s films that the decade is not from a different time period but a completely different dimension. Take Sixteen Candles: boys nonchalantly talking about date rape, photographing passed out women, locking geeks in trunks, blatant racism against Asians, and underage drinking and driving. Yet, it’s a classic American comedy.
John Hughes’s first feature film, Sixteen Candles (1984) is a typical ’80s high school comedy. The protagonist Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) is an angsty teenager turning 16 a day before her older sister’s wedding. But her mind is focused on languishing for her unrequited love, senior Jake Ryan, who she believes doesn’t know she exists. After a night of dancing and partying, however, and with the help of a cocky freshman simply known as the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall), Sam realizes that it is physically possible for her to be happy.
I suppose I don’t absolutely despise the film. I genuinely found some parts hilarious, like Sam’s sister trying to walk down the wedding aisle while hopped up on muscle relaxants or the Geek’s pathetic attempts to appear like a tough guy. But most of the time, I found myself to be laughing in disbelief because it was so ridiculous that it became an unintentional parody of itself.
For one, I wasn’t expecting the outright offensive racist and sexist characterizations that prevail throughout the movie. For a film that I had grown up thinking was on the same level as other John Hughes movies, Sixteen Candles actually shocked me with how easily the bigotry keeps rolling off the screen, from Long Duk Dong’s silly attempts at becoming “Americanized” to the Geek’s fixation on groping/ogling women to Sam’s role being reduced to complaints on body image and lack of attention on herself.
What really would have helped is if I had any reason to actually like the characters. Sam is quite dull, and she seems afraid that if she dares to break her monotone speech a crack in the universe would open up and swallow her whole. As for Jake, there is nothing interesting about him other than he is handsome and rich.
Unlike Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles does not translate well to a different era. Maybe the problem is that I should have either seen this film five years ago or should have been born 40 years ago. Maybe I’m already too detached from the high school experience or I just don’t understand what the ’80s were really like. In any case, I’m glad I saw Anthony Michael Hall’s performance in The Breakfast Club first, because I doubt I could have taken Brian’s character seriously otherwise.