Review of Don't You Forget About Me (2010) by Martin B — 26 Jan 2010

Can a documentary have spoilers? If so, well then: spoiler alert.

Any documentary about John Hughes is going to be worth watching, if only to relive so many classic moments from his films. The inclusion of recent interviews with cast members, collaborators, and other filmmakers inspired by his films are a real asset as well. But what keeps this documentary from being anything special is the way the filmmakers chose to focus on themselves. What originally was just to be a doc on Hughes' films and their impact was changed into a film focusing on the documentarians' quest to get an interview with the notoriously recluse director. Perhaps if they had succeeded, it would have been worth the work and made sense to include it; but the fact that they failed to get an interview, meet him, or even get a response from him makes that whole aspect of the film anticlimactic and pointless.