Here’s another John Hughes directed teen film that is considered a cultural touchstone of America. It also reentered the public consciousness recently when its star Molly Ringwald spoke about this along with The Breakfast Club in the wake of the #MeToo revelations. I wanted to watch this one as well because while The Breakfast Club isn’t exactly great, it did take the worries and concerns of teens seriously. Unfortunately Sixteen Candles is nothing at all like it and is an execrable film all around.

High-schooler Samantha Baker is insecure about her body and is looking forward to her 16th birthday. Unfortunately her whole family has forgotten about the day as everyone is busy with her elder sister’s upcoming marriage. At school she has a crush on a popular senior Jake who already has a hot girlfriend Caroline. Sam herself is the object of lust of a geeky junior Ted who seems to want to have sex with her mostly to impress his friends. Things get crazy when one set of grandparents bring a Chinese exchange student as a guest when they come for the wedding and Sam takes off to a school dance. Jake does seem to be interested in Sam as well, feeling that he has no real connection to Caroline. He teams up with Ted who claims that he knows Sam.

I already knew some of the horrible things that happen in this film from Ringwald’s article in The New Yorker including what amounts to rape but I was shocked by the egregiousness of the attitudes being evinced here. Most obviously there’s the incredibly racist design of the character Long Duk Dong of course but nearly every aspect of this film is offensive such as Ted’s aggressive intrusion into Sam’s personal space and his repeated attempts to grope her against her will. I know that this was another era but it’s still pretty difficult to understand not only why Sam doesn’t instantly deck him but allows him to have a conversation with her. It’s disturbing that Hughes clearly thought that this was all in the name of harmless teenage fun and that it’s funny. But it isn’t and I struggle to think of even a single instance of anything that could pass as being humorous in the entire film.

The strange thing is that this film was very well reviewed in its time and was praised for taking the hang-ups of its teen characters seriously. I struggle to think of where that holds true. Sam’s body issues and lack of confidence is sympathetic enough, yes, but her relationship with Jake is pure wish fulfillment and completely implausible. Jake’s character is basically a cardboard cut-out with no personality at all. There’s no moral center in this film at all as everyone is equally wacky and detestable. Even the grandparents hosting Long Duk Dong seem mostly interested in using him for cheap labor. In short, this film has no redeeming value at all and should be avoided at all costs.