Sixteen Candles
Peter Charney

Review by Peter Charney Pro

Sixteen Candles 1984

★★½

Watched 12 Sep 2023

First of all, I fully thought this had a magic realism premise and was the inspiration for that tv movie, 16 Wishes. Secondly, I got this on DVD from the library, which is not a thing I realized people still did (they probably don’t), but it made me really happy!

Sixteen Candles struggles to find balance between its romance plot, coming-of-age ideas, and its moments of pure comedy, much of which is severely dated and downright offensive. Still, there’s something to the way these kinds of movies exist as a time capsule of high school life and culture in their era that earns its own nostalgic value. The more of these 80s-00s teen movies I watch in close succession, the more I realize how similar they all are (despite the changes in clothes and music) but at vastly differently levels of quality. At least the dads are always great, and you can be sure to count on someone making some kind of bet.

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