Sixteen Candles (PG)
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Caution: spoilers.
This came out in 1984, but I didn't see it until 2022. I've always wanted to see it basically because it stars Molly Ringwald. And her presence in the movie was just about the only thing that didn't particularly bug me. So it's an understatement to say the movie disappointed me.
She plays a girl named Sam Baker, whose family forgets her 16th birthday, because they're focused on the impending wedding of her older sister, Ginny. (We eventually meet the guy she's going to marry, and he basically sucks, but Ginny doesn't seem to notice or care.) Of course Sam is upset that her family forgot her birthday, but she's got bigger problems. She's a sophomore in high school, and she's crushing on a senior named Jake Ryan. (The whole time I was watching the movie, I thought he was played by Matt Dillon, but actually it was some guy I've never heard of.) Jake is dating a girl named Caroline, but he doesn't really like her. At one point, Caroline appears nude in a shower, with Sam and her friend (whose name I never caught) spying on her. Sam is jealous of her breasts. There's also a freshman named "Farmer Ted" (Anthony Michael Hall) who has a crush on Sam, and is constantly bothering her. I really didn't like that guy, and I'm surprised at just how much Sam put up with from him. At one point she even agrees to lend him her underwear, to win a bet with his friends (one of whom is played by John Cusack). Ted mainly has two friends who are both bigger than he is, so I have no idea why they put up with him treating them like minions. There's also a foreign exchange student named Long Duk Dong, who has been staying with one set of Sam's grandparents, and comes with them when they come to stay at the Bakers' house for Ginny's wedding. That whole character just felt like a moderately racist characterization, which is one of the many things I hated about the movie. Also, Jake takes an interest in Sam, though it's not really clear to me just why. Maybe because he noticed her being interested in him, combined with him being tired of Caroline. Anyway, spoiler alert, Sam and Jake finally end up together, which I guess is nice. But he basically gives a drunken Caroline to Ted, and Ted takes advantage of her, which is completely reprehensible. (It's implied that they may have had sex, but neither of them remembers it, they just assume it happened, and I have no idea why.) Even if they didn't have sex (which would obviously have been rape), the way Ted acted was unacceptable. Probably the only thing about the movie I actually kind of liked was when Sam's father, and later her mother, apologize for having forgotten her birthday.
There's just so much that bugged me about this movie that it was impossible to care about the overall plot, but I don't think I would have cared about it even without those issues. And I don't know what else to tell you.