John Hughes directs Molly Ringwald, Michael Schoeffling and Anthony Michael Hall in this teen comedy about a girl going through a nightmare weekend on her sixteenth birthday. 

Year Zero for Eighties teen movie – this is where John Hughes found his voice. Still fans of the far superior and heartfelt The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink might find this first draft of the format in, awkwardly dated, bad taste. There is a whole HILARIOUS subplot centred around what looks to modern eyes very much like a date rape and the less said about Asian stereotype Long Duk Dong’s “clazy, clazy” parallel night the better. I guess it makes more sense when you realise this came in off the tail end of the Porky’s and Police Academy series, and John Hughes himself cut his teeth on the goofy and scatalogical Vacation movies; where bad behaviour was throwaway rather than a political statement. If you can get past the clunky humour that almost dominates then the soundtrack pops, fashion rocks and Anthony Michael Hall’s geek plus a silly recurring cameo by Joan Cusack improve those gone off, way past their sell by date flavours just about enough.

5