Sixteen Candles (1984) * * *

Directed by: John Hughes

Starring:  Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Michael Schoeffling, Gedde Watanabe, Paul Dooley, John Cusack

What separates a teen comedy like Sixteen Candles from a teen comedy like Porky's is the teenagers in Sixteen Candles are allowed to be vulnerable, touching, and even nice.     The ones in Porky's are essentially adults trying to imitate teens and failing badly.    The Porky's teens are one-dimensional and are never, ever insecure.   John Hughes was able to find the right touches in many of his comedies.    Who can't relate to a teenager with a hopeless, seemingly unrequited crush?   Anyone who says he or she can't is full of it.  

It's Samantha Baker's (Ringwald) sixteenth birthday and no one in her family remembered it.    The rest of her family is concerned with her older sister's wedding tomorrow.    Plus, both sets of grandparents and a foreign exchange student named Long Duk Dong (Watanabe) are also staying under the same roof for the weekend.    (Whenever the name Long Duk Dong is mentioned, a gong crashes over the soundtrack).    Samantha is also hopelessly crushing on a senior named Jake (Schoeffling), who has a pretty senior girlfriend and doesn't seem to notice Samantha.    Jake is not presented or performed as a dopey, aloof jock, but as someone who is tiring of his popular, empty girlfriend and may see Samantha as a pleasant alternative.    

Further complicating matters is geeky freshman Ted (Hall), who sports braces and has a crush of his own on Samantha.    Ted, like many teens his age, lacks social graces and doesn't know when he's not wanted.     His pursuit of Samantha is at first met with disgust, but soon the two are hanging out together in the school shop pondering their teen angst.     Both reveal themselves to be insecure and maybe would be friends if Ted didn't ask to borrow her underpants.    Why does he want them?    Not for perverted reasons, but to prove to his doubting friends that he could score with Samantha.    The $1.00 admission his friends charge to see the panties is icing on the cake to Samantha's bad day.

Long Duk Dong has no issue landing a girlfriend in his brief visit.  "Dong is here a few hours and he's found someone.   I've been here my whole life and I'm like a disease," Samantha laments.     Dong's night of partying ends with him face down on the front lawn, telling a car owner that his vehicle is in the lake.    Jake's house is also trashed after hosting an all-night party, one which he befriends Ted and discusses his intentions for Samantha.    

Sixteen Candles isn't deep, but it's a sweet comedy with actors who create sweet characters.     Molly Ringwald captures a somewhat lonely, but somehow hopeful teenage girl to a tee.     Anthony Michael Hall is all fast motion, optimism, and bravado, but conceals a secret that "would devastate my reputation as a dude."   He can't accept that some girl may not like him, because that would send his self-esteem into the toilet.   Watanabe takes Dong and runs with him.   He walks the tightrope between stereotype and comedy successfully.   I don't know if many other actors could pull that off.  

Like Uncle Buck, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, John Hughes found general sweetness in his characters and plays straight to that.    He had a good eye and ear for creating real people with real insecurities whom we could like.     I wonder if he saw a movie like Porky's and decided to make teenage comedies that were the opposite of everything he saw there.    I don't know the answer to that, but that sure is what seems to have happened.