Review of Sixteen Candles (1984) by James S — 27 Nov 2010

"Sixteen Candles.....it's a fair flick: there's tits in it but no bush!".

So goes Jason Mewes' rather succinct review of this John Hughes movie in Kevin Smith's Dogma. To be fair, it's not a bad review. Sixteen Candles isn't a good movie, it's John Hughes on auto-pilot at best but it does deliver one or two funny moments, predominantly courtesy of Anthony Michael Hall's The Geek.

Molly Ringwald is amiable enough but she can't carry the movie as the girl who's parents forget her sixteenth birthday in commotion surrounding her sisters wedding before the really hot guy at school decides he likes her. It's not the most compelling story, in fact it's barely a story at all. There's no real drive behind it and even though the film is barely 90 minutes long, it feels much longer with this threadbare narrative.

As said, there are one or two funny moments in the early going of the film but eventually it all gives way to highly unplausible silliness which doesn't hold the charm of Hughes' better movie like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Sixteen Candles ends up being a wholly predictable and rather hollow affair. The wedding set finale just becomes bizarre. Do we know why her sister is drunk at her own wedding? Is she meant to be drunk? Who knows, it's all so slap dash like put together that it is becomes clear that Hughes is trying to throw every teenage cliche at the screen and it hasn't really worked this time.