The cute stalker or the dreamy coward? Take your pick.

Wow, Duckie is lurking in the shadows, just like a creepy stalker he actually is.

This entire post is a spoiler. So beware.

Love hurts. But you already knew that.

Yet that is precisely what Pretty in Pink is about. Duckie (Jon Cryer), Andie's (Molly Ringwald) sweet-faced, puppy-eyed best friend, is also deeply, deeply, deeply in love with her. He is so in love with her that he would ride his bike by her house everyday and pretty much stalk her at the record store where she works. But in the end, he loves her enough to let her go, so she can end up with the dreamy, popular Blane (Andrew McCarthy).

In the original ending, Duckie and Andie were together in the end. The test audience didn't like it and Ringwald didn't like it either. Ringwald confessed that she would have liked to see Duckie and Andie end up together if Robert Downey Jr. had played Duckie because she thought Downey was "cuter." Quite understandable.

The official ending has been the topic of much debate over the past twenty-three years (or at least IMDb makes it seem that way). I believe that most women, twenty-three years later, realized that, if they had the chance to go back in time, they would choose the "Duckie" of their high school lives, over the "Blane." Nothing screams love more than undying dedication, no matter how unnatural and creepy it is.

Unlike Andie, most women saw how Duckie has matured. He is finally able to let Andie go. They sympathized with him and loved him for his heroic act. Andie doesn't see those qualities in the same light.

But I'm still a teenage girl. To me, Andie's choice is completely justified. Compared to Duckie, Blane seems the more mature throughout. Blane is most likely not deliberately failing his classes or obsessing over her in a disturbingly prepubescent way. While Blane is a douche-slash-wimp, he genuinely cares for Andie. And Andie is completely infatuated with him. The heart wants what it wants. And let's face it: On a superficial level, McCarthy was a more handsome young man than Cryer was. McCarthy was certainly the dashing knight in a shining armor in every sense.

And for the short time I have been alive, I have only learned one important lesson about love the hard way: A person isn't the perfect match for you unless he/she loves you. (Everything else, I learned from the movies.)

Despite how accurate Pretty in Pink is, the film itself is still pretty mediocre. Those eighties John Hughes teen movies aren't clicking with me. The film is rather tedious. Ringwald is rather unlikable and difficult to connect with. I want to shoot Duckie in the face the entire time for being stalkerish and annoying. But hey, McCarthy is really, really dreamy every time he shows up on screen.

The central question remains: Who would you have chosen--Duckie or Blane--and why?

"Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place."

The Breakfast Club | rel. 1984 | dir. John Hughes

The Breakfast Club is often hailed as the greatest high school movie ever made. When I realized that I was one of the very few high school students who had not yet witnessed the pure brilliance of this John Hughes classic, I felt a little left out. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Before I delve into my opinion of this film, I want to discuss my experience as a high school student thus far. I attend a suburban high school with a lovely campus, much like the setting of The Breakfast Club. My high school has its share of nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, preps, and some others who would fall into the misc. category. But people kind of just mind their own business at my school. There is a lot of cross-pollination going on at my school. One can have brains and be involved in a lot of social activities. Nerds can be fantastic athletes. People have a choice to make friends or be a loner. I don't know if I'm just extraordinarily lucky or not, but I go to a pretty accepting school. People know each other and generally treat each other with respect. If a cheerleader were to speak to a nerd, it would not tarnish either party's social record.

Everyone is a little bit of everything around here.

I think one of the advantages of attending a fairly liberal school is that stereotyping is pretty minor and kept at an inoffensive distance. Perhaps that creates a more friendlier, less conflicted environment. Teachers are more aloof. Students choose to light up away from the school. Complete and total rebellion is kept at a minimum.

(I bet if several of my friends read this, they would give me the look the average middle-class person would give to President George W. Bush whenever he insists that America's economy is strong. But it's all about generalities and perspectives, my friends.)

Because of my experience (or lack thereof) as a teenager and high school student, I could not relate to or care for The Breakfast Club. I guess the most plausible explanation is that the film is simply dated. It has elements of the eighties glossed all over it--the fashion, the music, the hairstyles, etc. Then again, I love the eighties, so that couldn't have been a factor in my dislike of the film. But isn't stereotyping supposed to be a timeless message? Of course it is. Even if it doesn't happen at my school, I'm sure it happens in other schools. But I don't think Hughes executed his message about destroying the concept of stereotypes at all. In the end, I was completely lost in Hughes's mixed message about the world called high school.

The Breakfast Club centers around five teenagers who show up for a day-long detention at the school library: the brain (Anthony Michael Hall), the athlete (Emilio Estevez), the basket case (Ally Sheedy), the princess (Molly Ringwald), and the criminal (Judd Nelson). At first, they can't stand each other; conflicts are created. But little by little, they reach over their comfort zones, start talking each other and realize they have more in common than they initially thought.

All this felt forced and rather dull. The conversations aren't engaging and the characters aren't at all likable. I can't blame the performances--the young actors are quite good--but the characters definitely feel underdeveloped. Hughes is an interesting storyteller and creates somewhat authentic characters, but something is missing in his dialogue. Something doesn't ring true. So even though it might seem like it sometimes, no one is ever black and white. Okay, I get it... Then why couldn't these characters look each other in the eye before?

Apart being branded with their stereotypes, how do these kids really feel about the people they associate with everyday who are also branded with a similar stereotype? How do they feel about being part of such a group? Perhaps all my answers are answered somewhere in the film, but everything seems to be muzzled by excessive, annoying, and hard-to-relate to whining. Hughes doesn't really create a world for the high school, which makes his smaller world between these five teens harder to believe.

A major problem I have with the film is the ending. Comfort zones are broken down. Characters are changed. But do they change for the better? Do they finally accept who they are? Why must one of the characters change completely just so she could be accepted and loved by another character? (Yes, I'm referring to Sheedy's character.) Sure, I can understand how The Breakfast Club is a teen classic (Nostalgia? Maybe.), but it is nowhere close to one of the best high school movies ever. The film contradicts itself too much and lacks the truest emotions and wonders of being at such an interesting and sometimes difficult age.

Rating: 6/10

I will be re-watching this film as a companion piece to The Catcher in the Rye in my English class some time during the spring semester. So yes, this film will be re-reviewed to see if my feelings toward this film have been changed or not.