Review of Don't You Forget About Me (2010) by Jack   — 02 May 2010

A pretty underwhelming and emotionally hollow documentary about some very boring Toronto teens who travel to Chicago to try and flatter John Hughes out of his silence and in doing so convince him to come back to Hollywood and make another teen classic for everyone.

Right. As this film progresses and the kids talk and their interview subjects talk about Hughes in the years since his last movie and interview it becomes painfully clear that these kids are stupid for thinking they'll get the time of day out of this guy. He retired and disappeared from the public eye for a reason, why would he give his first interview in ten years and make his first movie in eighteen, just because a bunch of film school brats from Toronto creepily stalk around Chicago looking for all the places they heard he does his shopping or orders his pizza, show up on his door step and say they loved his teen movies and it would mean a lot to everyone if he would come out of retirement? The fact that they save his interview, which they may not even get, and don't, for the end piece to their film makes the doc all the more silly and pointless.

There are some interviews with a few who worked for, or where inspired by Hughes' work that are pretty interesting, but for the most part this is a waste of time.

It's pretty obvious that the unfortunate truth for this filmmaker is that if Hughes hadn't died so soon after this movie's completion, it never would've gotten made.