"SIXTEEN CANDLES" is about suburban Chicago teen-agers, but it's less raucous in tone
than most of the recent teen pictures; it's closer to the gentle English comedies of the forties and
fifties. It doesn't amount to much, and it's certainly not to be confused with a work of art or a
work of any depth, but the young writer-director John Hughes has a knack for making you like
the high-school age characters better each time you hear them talk. The picture has a good,
simple premise. Samantha (Molly Ringwald), a high-school sophomore, is having the worst day
of her life. It's her sixteenth birthday, and, in the midst of preparations for her older sister's wed-
ding, the whole family has forgotten about it. And in the evening, when she goes to a school
dance and longs to be noticed by the handsome senior (Michael Schoeffling) who's the man of
her dreams, she's subjected to the humiliating attentions of a scrawny freshman (Anthony
Michael Hall) who's known as Geek--a pesty, leering smartmouth with braces
on his teeth. (His
attempt at a sexy smile is pure weirdness.) Geek follows her wherever she goes, ogling her, and
he tries to court her on the dance floor, circling around her like an impassioned whooping crane.
He moves quickly, with his head down: he's not watching his feet--he's concentrating on the
action of his body. He's turning himself on, and he feels masterful; he isn’t aware of the effect
he's having on Samantha until she runs off. Samantha gets so down on herself and the world that
when the senior, who feels he's alone when he's with his prom-queen girlfriend, comes over to
her she panics and bolts. The senior, misunderstanding, feels
rejected.
Molly Ringwald, who played Miranda in Paul Mazursky's 1982 "Tempest" and was the
young heroine of Lamont Johnson's 1983 "Space-hunter," has an offbeat candor. Only fifteen
when "Sixteen Candles" was shot, she plays a free-spoken modern cutie, and it's perfectly clear
that Samantha's freedom is the result of a pleasant middle-class home and loving parents. There's
nothing submissive about her, but she isn't rebellious, either. When Samantha is alone, she
sometimes talks out loud, telling us what she thinks, and Molly Ringwald does it so artlessly it
seems like a normal way of behaving. Her acting gives the picture a lyric quality. The tilt of
Samantha's head suggests a guileless sort of yearning, and there's something lovely about the
slight gaucheness of her restless, long arms. In one of the film's best scenes, she finds herself
alone with Geek and discovers that she can actually talk to him about her troubles. She
recognizes that the reason she hasn't liked him is that he's young, like her. He drops his brash,
coming-on manner, and she tells him about its being her birthday that everyone forgot-as she
puts it, her family "just sort of blew it off." He confesses that he has never "bagged a babe," and
she tells him her deepest secret-that she is still "on hold," and that she has been saving herself for
the handsome senior.
Geek treats that confidence very respectfully; he also loses his crush on her fast-he's not
on the prowl for a maiden. During their conversation, he begins to look less Geeky and just un-
formed. He has pale eyelashes, and his fair hair sticks up on his head but it is too downy to
achieve the punk effect he hoped for; he has the soft features of a fledgling. Anthony Michael
Hall is in fact no more than a year older than the freshman he's playing.
His Geek is a computer-age teen version of the early Woody Allen character--the fast-talking genius nerd--but Hall
moves like Steve Martin, and even more confidently. Geek, with his pitchman's hard sell, is a
product of television (and his appearances are heralded by the theme music of TV shows).
What's best about him is his self-awareness; he knows that he looks like a jerk, but he's not going
to let that stop him from making out. He has nerve; he's an operator, and he knows how to put
what he learns to use--he has a man-to-man talk with the senior which is a model of suave
diplomacy. Part of what makes "Sixteen Candles" entertaining is that the senior-a confident-
looking jock--has his own uncertainties and turns out to be as romantic at heart as Samantha,
while Geek comes through as a stud.
This picture was John Hughes' debut as a director (he wrote the scripts for a couple of
National Lampoon films and for "Mr. Mom"), and he may have got in a little over his head.
Samantha has a full complement of family: in addition to siblings (her younger brother is played
by Justin Henry, of "Kramer vs. Kramer," who's going through an odd phase--he looks like a
little Stephen King), she has two parents, and her four grandparents have arrived at her house for
the wedding. All these people are part of Hughes' farcical superstructure, and maybe there's too
much of this apparatus. One set of grandparents (a huge man and a tiny woman) compete with
each other, talking to Samantha at the same time; as dumb gags go, it's not bad, but Hughes
shows no particular emotion about the people-nothing to make it more than a dumb gag. The
four grandparents come off as sitcom characters, and so do the new in-laws and most of the
people involved in the wedding. And somehow the relationship between Samantha and her sister
(Blanche Baker), the bride, seems lost in a haze. It isn't clear what sort of girl this sister is meant
to be, and though her scenes are skewed to be funny they don't quite get there.
The children in this family are a strange assortment-they couldn't look more unlike. But they
sound like siblings. John Hughes has a feeling for verbal rhythms, and he knows how kids toss
words around, especially the words that set them apart from their elders. What gives "Sixteen
Candles" its peppiness is his affection for teenagers' wacko slang-phrases carrying such strong
positive and negative charges that they have a dizzy immediacy. And he's on to how kids use
computerese, as in "By night's end, I predict that me and her will interface."
-PAULINE KAEL
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