On Saturday night, I went to a midnight showing of John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink. It’s the classic tale of love between a rich kid and a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Will their interclass love blossom, or will it wilt under societal pressure? It sounds timeless, doesn’t it? If you consider the number of laughs it got, I’d say no.
One scene in particular shows that Hughes aimed too high. On their first date, Andie (Molly Ringwald) and Blane (Andrew McCarthy) have a downright unpleasant time at a party where his friends harass her for being poor and then at a rock club where her friends harass him for being a preppy. When Andie gets home, she declares to her drunken, jobless father (who is curled up on the couch wearing nothing but a bathrobe, ick!) that she’s in love. The lousy setup isn’t the only reason that makes it hard to believe; McCarthy’s acting range consists of two emotions: boredom and a bug-eyed look of surprise. He’s a long way from anything that would make him close to charming.
Despite the acting and the writing, I’m not going to complain about all of the things that make it a bad film; it’s beyond that. It has entered the realm of it’s so bad it’s good. How can you not smile when Blane’s friend Steff (James Spader tells Blaine that he “wouldn’t be too jazzed about dating a girl like Andie.” The last time I heard the word “jazzed”, my mom was telling me how much she and my dad were looking forward to going on a cruise. Obviously, I’m being temporally centric and watching the movie from the perspective of 2004. It’s almost better that way. If not, I would have ignored the scene where Andie’s boss, the owner of a record store, proudly looks at the 78’s that she just stapled to the ceiling and says, “I love it. It’s so modern.” The biggest laugh comes from a scene involving an Apple IIE that would stupefy even today’s programmers.
Amidst blockbuster names like Ringwald and McCarthy, Jon Cryer steals the show as Duckie, Andie’s strangely-styled friend who is so enamored with her that he rides his BMX past her house fifty times a day. Cryer nails a scene where he lip syncs an Otis Redding tune so well that it almost makes you feel bad that he’s half a man on CBS.
