No More Yanky My Wanky

I'm starting a new thing here and in the interest of saving time, I'm going to keep the explanation brief.

Harper started summer vacation a little over week ago and it's made me sentimental. When I was a kid, if I wasn't outside during the summer, I was inside watching movies. Being that I grew up in the 80s, well, you can gather what kind of movies I watched. So I've decided to do something similar to the month-long Boogerman-athon I did back in October, only this will be spread out over 3 months and it will be with 80s movies instead of horror movies. And I won't be posting every day, just every couple of days. See, it's totally exactly the same, only different.

First up, in case the blatantly obvious post title didn't give it away:




1984's '16 Candles'

Starring: Molly Ringwald, Justin Henry, Michael Schoeffling, Haviland Morris, Gedde Wantanabe, Anthony Michael Hall and Paul Dooley. Directed by John Hughes

Plot: Spoiled proto-emo girl pouts because her family has more important things to deal with than her birthday.

Genre: Comedy

What I remember about it: You may have sensed some hostility in my plot summary there. I loved the movie, seen it many, many times. But the one thing I came away with after every viewing, was the fact that Samantha Baker was one of the most unsympathetic characters in teen movie history. I can empathize to a point with the whole forgetting the birthday thing, but they lost any shot at pity by making Samantha so unlikable.

Seriously-she does nothing during the entire movie but mope and whine and it grated on my nerves to no end. And we're supposed to want Jake Ryan to leave his teen queen girlfriend, Caroline, who seemed like a genuinely nice person (and also loads of fun if her behavior at the post-dance party was any indication) for HER? What, are you kidding me?

I think one of the main reasons I didn't like Samantha, aside from her being a spoiled brat, was her whole "If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you" passive/aggressive schtick. They forgot your birthday? FUCKING TELL THEM. You'll make out like a bandit later, trust.

On the other hand, as annoying as she was, I still watched the damn thing repeatedly because of the stereotyped awesomeness that was Long Duk Dong, and I still quote his lines on a daily basis, some 24 years (!) later.

Where are they now?: Believe it or not, all the lead actors are still acting, save for one. According to IMDB, Michael Schoeffling (Jake) has a successful business selling hand-crafted furniture in Pennsylvania, where he lives with his family.

In case you haven't seen it, or don't own it, or don't get cable where they show it at least once a month, you can buy a copy of 16 Candles Here.