Latex Movie Review: Pretty in Pink

In my opinion the late John Hughes was highly overrated. He began as a writer for the early National Lampoon franchise a year after the release of Animal House writing episodes for it's spin off television series Delta House, and then moving on to the dreadful Class Reunion followed by the first three Vacation films. His first big break came from the film Mr. Mom, a hack of a script that was transformed into a minor classic thanks to the talents of it's stars Michale Keaton and Teri Garr. The success of that film gave Hughes the clout to write and direct his own low budget film Sixteen Candles. In an amazing bit of casting luck three of the film's stars would be identified as members of the Brat Pack, a supposed grouping of popular teenage actors who dominated the films of the 1980s, although the exact membership of this group has always been open to debate. Hughes saved his best material for his own movie, and Sixteen Candles was a legitimate classic. He followed it up by writing and directing The Breakfast Club, yet another classic comedy featuring the second largest casting of Brat Pack members. ( only St. Elmo's Fire which was deliberately made to cash in on the Brat Pack phenomena had more, beating The Breakfast Club with seven Brat Packers ) The Breakfast Club made John Huges the industries most sought after writer/director as well as a household name. And while he did continue to create legitimate classic comedies such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Planes, Trains & Automobiles, he was also responsible for some of the next decades hokiest scripts, including the three Home Alone movies, Beethoven, Dennis the Menace, and Baby's Day Out. In retrospect, while Hughes was a genius at writing scripts that captured the lingo of the '80s teenagers, for someone who wrote comedies almost exclusively he was a terrible gag writer. The success or failure of his films had always depended on the talent of the casts involved, and it is there that Hughes was usually lucky. Laughs were achieved not through the material itself but the performance of the actors.

Picking up on the success of Hughes after The Breakfast Club, music video director Howard Deutch began his feature film career by using Hughes scripts, many which seemed to be rejected drafts of Sixteen Candles. They followed the same formula. Teenager A is a geek who suddenly discovers that the very popular Teenager B has fallen for him/her. Teenager A has an even geekier friend, Teenager C, who has been madly in love with Teenager A since grade school, but who Teenager A only sees as one of his/her best friends. Pretty in Pink follows this formula to the T, which is why I have often confused it with the far superior Sixteen Candles ( and not as much with Some Kind of Wonderful which reverses the genders ). Both Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles star Molly Ringwald which confuses both even more. For those trying to tell both movies apart, Sixteen Candles is the one with the Asian exchange student Long Duk Dong while Pretty in Pink has the wonderful actor Harry Dean Stanton as Molly's father. By this time Molly had become the supposed queen of the Brat Pack ( although others claim that honor belonged to Ally Sheedy ) and one of Hollywood's leading teenage actresses. She had began her career as the rollerskating student named Molly on the Different Strokes spin off series The Facts of Life, but was fired along with many other cast members when the show's producers decided to retool the series for it's second season, stripping the cast down to four girls. Ringwald found it impossible to find work, settling for a part in the forgettable 3D movie Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone before John Hughes rescued her career by casting her as the lead in Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Realizing that her success was in John Hughes movies, Ringwald accepted the lead in Pretty in Pink, which is probably why Deutch was able to get the film green lighted. Jon Cryer takes over for Anthony Michael Hall ( who was then busy as a Saturday Night Live cast member ) as Molly's geeky friend Duckie.

Pretty in Pink remains the weakest of the John Hughes teen comedies, mostly because the rehashed material here was done so much better before. It just does not have the laughs that the other Hughes films have. But one wonders if that was what Hughes was even going for. The majority of the script is romance and drama with all the comedy falling on Jon Cryer's character. Take his character out and there would be no comedy at all. Unusual for a John Huges film, the grown ups are not idiots. Harry Dean Stanton is very effective as Ringwald's father, a broken man recovering from the loss of his wife who walked out on him and Molly a few years earlier. Annie Potts plays Molly's record store co-worker, old enough to be her mother but thankfully Hughes script does not go for the predictable and have Annie hook up with Molly's father. Both actors deliver touching melancholy performances which make this movie worth watching. Rounding out the cast is Andrew McCarthy as Molly's love interest, James Spader as McCarthy's jerk friend who convinces him to break up with Molly, The late Alexa Kenin as Molly's best friend at school, and Andrew Dice Clay as a bouncer also called Anderw Dice Clay.

THE SCENE:
A classic moment from the '80s. 7 minutes into the movie actress Annie Potts is wearing a tight laced back black vinyl dress over a white backless t-shirt. Throw in a crazy spike punk hairdo to finish the effect. The entire scene, where Annie and Molly discuss the prom, a shoplifting teenager is shot with a staple gun, and Annie argues with her boyfriend on the phone about some bondage sex they had, lasts a goo 4 minutes. There are no other outfits worn by any other character in this movie that qualifies mention, although Annie does go through a few interesting costumes including a 1940s style party dress and a near satin pink 1960's prom dress.