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By
NICK ZEGARAC
John Hughes had a string of
hits in the early eighties that for the most part,
followed Molly Ringwald, through a series of
misadventures in growing up. Among these, "Sixteen
Candles" is vintage Hughes. It observes one
Samantha Baker (Ringwald) in her quest to stir the
honorable intentions of the most popular boy at
school, Jake Ryan (Michael Shoeffling) who -- no,
can it be? -- turns out to be a genuinely nice guy
at heart. Samantha is mortified when her parents,
in preparation of their other daughter's wedding,
completely forget that it's her sweet sixteen. But
that humiliation pales in comparison when the
geek, Farmer Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) pegs
Samantha to be his date at a high school dance.
Unable to shake Ted, Samantha agrees to a truce by
letting Ted show off a pair of her underwear to
his equally geeky friends. This, of course,
confuses Jake who, by this time has discovered
that Samantha is attracted to him. The film also
features Gedde Watanabe as the irrepressible Long
Duck Dong -- an exchange student who gets a crash
course in heavy partying from his American
friends.
The screenplay pulled out all the stops for comedy
and sweetness and the film -- all hype and
nonsense -- brilliantly captures that snapshot of
1980's Americana in which every teenager within
viewing distance desperately wants to fit in.
Universal's anamorphically enhanced DVD is a
disappointment. The film suffers from faded
colors, low contrast, weak black levels, color
bleeding and an incredible loss of fine detail in
the image throughout. Flesh tones are pasty.
Age-related artifacts including chips, scratches
and jump cuts in editing are glaringly obvious. In
addition, night scenes suffer from a near blackout
characteristic in which a completely dark viewing
room is needed just to get by. The audio, remixed
to 5.1 in Dolby and DTS, is barely stereo, with no
separation among the channels except in its music
tracks. There are no extras. |
