Posted on 02/03/2025 6:04:40 AM PST by Beowulf9
John Hughes, the great bard of 1980s teen movies? That's what one reviewer said.
Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in pink, National Lampoons Vacation, Home Alone, Ferris Bueller's day off on and on with movies that make me think of some NOT teenaged guy, but a pervert living out his sexual fantasies vicariously through some teens used as pawns by him in his movies forced to act as if this is the real way teens think and behave.
Only they don't, didn't.
How do or did people find this guys films charming? The only good things in them are there because of the culture he grew up in and still existed inside him like some ragged piece of cloth hanging onto to someone who went through a natural disaster. Which is what happened to our country and the better times that we saw torn away from us by the liberal faction in Hollywood and politics making movies like this populating the screens in theatres, you know, just before movie prices went too high for people to pleasantly to afford a nice time in the theatre. Only they took that away from us too, by making movies like these.
Only who could with scripts like this peppered with unsightly views of youths used like puppets for a dirty joke, a baudy snicker, a condescending tale to tell or was it an envious gape at the fresh faces coming into their own.
The talented kids in those movies made them somewhat watchable as I flinched through the lines fed them. I did not know they were all made by the same man till reading today on the net of this producer, writer.
Yet, he is lauded. Unbelievable.
See Post #19. You beat me to it. LOL.
Ringwald was sexually assaulted during the making of these movies by someone working in the making of the movie, that was the general and is the general treatment of young actors.. One of the problems with that culture.
Home Alone is sexual fantasy?
-As each of the characters were introduced in the film, the vast majority of us were thinking, "That reminds me exactly of... (name of kid in our high school)"
-As the story unfolded, virtually every high school age kid who saw the movie saw something of themselves in one or more of the characters."
-Some, by no means all, of the kids who saw that film grew at least a little appreciation for others they normally wouldn't associate with in school.
The thing about "Breakfast Club" is that it points out that our teen years are a pivotal time, probably the first part of our lives when we have something resembling a "backstory," and while that backstory may put us on a path that can determine the trajectory our lives are going to take, we are still young enough that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
Those are the best, funniest movies of the 1980’s.
I’ve heard her criticize the content of the movies now based on current woke ideology but I’ve never heard her say something like that before. Back up your accusation here with some proof.
Edie McClurg stole the movie.
“Do you think these guys know The Commodores?”
I was surprised as a child to learn that the cartoons I was watching were originally made for adults and aired as shorts in movie theaters.
It hit me a few years ago looking at some super hero CGI nonsense, that they're still cartoons aimed at adults although with better graphics and sound effects.
I thought she was complaining that the movies were “too white”.
I’ll second that and we were smoking and drinking beer too. The horror 🧟♂️
Sexual fantasies in Home Alone?! That sounds like a you problem.
I loved Sixteen Candles and Breakfast Club. 😉
Uncle Buck is till great...Take this quarter. Go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face.
My favorite of the list is Hairspray. It’s a fun, campy movie that is a good parody of 50s/60s TV dance shows. As for The Breakfast Club, I saw it in college with my buddies. We all related to it because each character reminded of us of people we knew in high school. And the actors made them realistic, not stereotypical.
See my comment at #25. Thanks for validation of my thesis :-)
I can’t watch those movies now either, but I saw them when released, and they were indeed popular and at the time, and considered new and different.
He captured “teen angst” of the 1980s in a way that hadn’t been done before. Molly Ringwald was a sweet girl with a woman’s emotions and Matthew Broderick was still a kid, but with the manipulative ability of an adult. His films didn’t involve gratuitous sex, violence, or dirty language either, which automatically (and smartly) made them “mass-market.”
The common theme of his “coming of age” films was emotionally mature and intelligent children in conflict with obtuse or wooden adults around them.
I guess Gen-X kids liked this. It was somehow particular to that era
But I agree with you - watching teen angst now as a middle-aged adult is cringe-inducing, like looking through awkward yearbook photos.
Oops. My bad. Hairspray is John Waters, not John Hughes.
You should spend your Saturday nights reading “NextRush Unplugged” vanity blogs, found here on FR. I think his kind of writing and wit is more your speed.
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