Classic--Sixteen Candles

or: Growing up, John Hughes style.

One word to sum it up: Crude.

I believe that every teenage should watch at least one John Hughes film while they are growing up. Yeah, the material is a little dated because we no longer live in the craziness that was the 1980's, but the themes in his films are still relevant. Sixteen Candles is every inch the film that pretty much sums up a kid in the 80's growing up, but some of things in this film are timeless. It's just a shame that I couldn't really get into this movie because I found it rather ludicrous, to say the least.

Samantha's (Molly Ringwald) life is going downhill fast. The fifteen-year-old has a crush on the most popular boy in school, and the geekiest boy in school has a crush on her. Her sister's getting married, and with all the excitement the rest of her family forgets her birthday! Add all this to a pair of horrendously embarrassing grandparents, a foreign exchange student named Long Duc Dong, and we have the makings of a hilarious journey into young womanhood.

This film is purely John Hughes. I could see all the early developments of this masterful director coming through in this film: the strange humour, the ultra hip and often very loud soundtrack, and the famed look into the mind set of a teenager. However, I felt like this was a little too much, especially considering it was one of his earlier films. It's like David Fincher and Fight Club. While that movie was very good, Fincher often got too ahead of himself, and since then he has honed in his style and consistently makes very elaborate and smooth running movies. Hughes went a little too far with Sixteen Candles and it's humour, but his future films like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off have better controlled writing, direction and even soundtrack, and are far more enjoyable.

In saying that, Sixteen Candles isn't a bad movie. I couldn't help but feel that this was the real beginning of all the crude teenage comedies we see these days, like Superbad. Instead of making growing up as a teenager the bore and unhappy experience that it often is, Hughes uses his signature style to make fun of it. The best thing about it is that I could relate to the heroine, Samantha Baker, in more ways than one, which is so hard to find in a teenage comedy. Molly Ringwald is a good fit in the lead character: being pretty, but not to pretty; being talented, but not mind blowing. Sixteen Candles has redemption in the great ensemble cast which even includes a young John Cusack. They fill interesting characters that do look and sound like they have come straight out of the corridors of high school. To be perfectly honest, Sixteen Candles isn't particularly memorable, and probably one of John Hughes' lesser films. But it's not a bad way to spend some time watching.


THE VERDICT: John Hughes' talent is evident, but it's like he's trying to shove it in our face. Molly Ringwald and the beginnings of the 'brat pack' offer Sixteen Candles it's chance to be a great film, a place where it never quite gets.

6/10

DVD--Hot Tub Time Machine

or: The Hangover...Sci-Fi styles

One word to sum it up: Different

Despite the fact that Hot Tub Time Machine looked like just another gross-out comedy, I still really wanted to see it. Maybe because I have this sort of thing for John Cusack. Okay, I really do like gross-out comedies, so of course I would want to see Hot Tub Time Machine. And it was one of the first comedies to be rated over 50% on Rotten Tomatoes this year...

Three friends on losing streaks: Adam (John Cusack), whose girlfriend dumped him, Nick (Craig Robinson), with a dead-end job and a cheating wife, and Lou (Rob Corddry), a suicidal alcoholic. To help Lou recover from car-exhaust poisoning, Adam and Nick, with Adam's nephew Jacob (Clark Duke), go to a winter resort that was their old party place. It's now a dump, but the lads rally for a night of drinking in the hot tub. Somehow, the hot tub takes them back to 1986, on a fateful night for each of them. Maybe if they do everything the same way they did that night, they'll get back to the future so Jacob can be born. There are serious temptations to do things differently. Will they make it back to their sorry lives? And what about Jacob?

Hot Tub Time Machine passes as a lesser version of The Hangover, but manages to take on a similar plot to The Butterfly Effect (which is referenced in the movie, by the way), and succeeds. To be honest, the 'psychological mind-flip comedy' probably shouldn't eventuate into an actual genre, because this film didn't exactly perfect it. However, the out come of it was charmingly funny and overall, a pretty good comedy. Those who long for the days of the 80s to come back, Hot Tub Time Machine is a perfect film to do some reminiscing with. It has every 80s reference in the book, including the fashion that I have come to fear in my lifetime. For once, the 80s look as cool as they did in Back to the Future.

Like The Hangover, this is the ultimate male bonding flick, as these already-friends became closer as the movie got on. It does lean a little too close to being a bit inappropriate, and the use of women is what is to be expected in a comedy of it's stature. The cast are a little different, but they all play the same admirable douchebags we have seen a few times before. John Cusack looks a little too weary in the film, probably a little tired from saving the world in 2012, but serves as a good lead and makes the most of an unlikeable character. The rest of the cast are inappropriately funny but manage to get the real belly laughs out, especially Rob Corddry, who's aggressiveness is just, well, funny.

The title is real silly, and the film matches that promise. It's silly, but it still manages to be a smart-ish comedy. I mean, it has this amazing message, which I can't help but feel defines our generation: If we went back in time, we would literally die without technology. Yeah, and some say comedies don't mean anything.


THE VERDICT: Pretty much a silly, but funny comedy, that won't fail to make your stomach hurt from all the laughing at some stage. It doesn't quite make it up there with The Hangover, but it is 2010's closest answer to it.

7/10