We had a rather close poll, so close it was a tie. So to please all of our fine readers, we decided to watch both movies. Jim watched “Caddyshack”, where as I watch “Sixteen Candles”. Now watching movies like this really make me wish I was a teenager in the 80’s, because the 00’s were boring and lame. And the only thing I can do to live the 80’s is to watch these terribly cheesy 80’s movies. Click the jump to see if I enjoyed living the 80’s.
I generally don’t like romantic comedies, but this did have Anthony Hall and Molly Ringwald so I guess it couldn’t all bad, right? The movie is all about Samantha (Molly) on the day before her older sister’s wedding, everything is hectic and it is also her own birthday. As everyone forgets her birthday, life can’t get worse. Oh wait yes it can, she has the biggest crush on the school’s hunk and the geekiest dweeb has a crush on her. Talk about high school drama, well least she didn’t give away her panties. The movie revolves around her for the next few days and her roller coaster called life.
The dweeb and his idol.
The story seems non-existent besides giving a few situations for the characters to do their thing. This leads me to the characters, I liked most of them and here is why. There are only a few main ones; Samantha, The Geek (Anthony) and of course Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe). A cool tidbit is that John Cusack is in this film and he is a nerd, one of us. The characters I liked, they all added their twist to the movie, all funny. But by far, Dong was my favourite. He is an exchange student from China, and his strict lifestyle gets transformed into a party animal. And the trouble he gets into, made me laugh. And there is this weird reoccurring joke with a girl and she has a neck brace, and they show clips of her struggling to do simple tasks. I don’t get that at all.
Now this movie isn’t amazing, it does have some glaring flaws such as: it gets awkwardly boring in the middle. For maybe 20 minutes, I was not paying attention to the movie and too busy checking up sports stats. The scenes were a lot of blabbing and nothing funny or entertaining. This was mainly due to it being boring and lacking a decent story. Also, the ending was a rather let down, I was hoping for something big and wanting for the high school hunk to swoop Samantha off her feet. But none of that, I guess the kiss at the end over the cake was cute, but I don’t care for that.
Overall, I had fun with this movie. It was cheeky, funny and so 80’s. I had fun with it, even laughed a few times. The characters will keep you interested but the story will be your perfect anesthetic. If you are in for a funny 80’s movie, take this under consideration. But I am glad I saw this cult classic, I needed to see this.
Nice review, Puneet. :) I love that you recognized that the real draw of this movie is not that it's flawless or even a work of cinematic art. It's the way people can identify with the coming-of-age themes embedded in it and the interesting characters who play their sometimes super-exaggerated-but-still-recognizable parts so well. That's probably why it is a cult classic, and why it will likely remain one for a long time. ;)
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