Sixteen Candles
The Breakfast Club
Pretty in Pink
Weird Science
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Planes, Trains & Automobiles
She’s Having a Baby
Uncle Buck
Mr. Mom
National Lampoon’s Vacation
European Vacation
Some Kind of Wonderful
The Great Outdoors
Christmas Vacation
Home Alone
59 years old. Too young.
It’s a generally inane cliche to call an artist the voice of a generation. Still, as much as any single person can be that to at least a sizable segment of a generation, John Hughes was. His films will be remembered, watched and loved long, long after the work of more ‘important’ filmmakers is forgotten.
Being the age I am, and especially having grown up in the suburbs of Chicago where most of his films were set, I saw many of his films in the theater during my teens and early twenties. Everyone has his favorite, but the one that caught me the most off guard was Home Alone. That was a simply gigantic hit, but the ads made it look like kiddie fare, and by then Hughes’ reputation was taking a hit from the hipster crowd.
When I finally broke down and more or less dragged myself to see it, more than eight months after it first hit theater screens (yep, movies used to hang around that long, sometimes), I was completely and utterly unprepared for the fact that it was quite simply the finest example of pure, old-fashioned slapstick Hollywood had produced in decades. I literally found myself crying I laughed so hard during the last half of that movie. And I’ve never been one to shy away from schmaltz, so that element didn’t hurt the film with me either.
In any case, nearly everyone my age has at least one John Hughes film they love (my much younger sister Beth must have watched Some Kind of Wonderful literally dozens of times on VHS when she was a teen). Lines of his dialogue (“Those aren’t pillows!”) remained firmly lodged in that gestalt consciousness we call culture, accessed and referenced on a daily basis somewhere in the country. Even most of his lesser works, like Uncle Buck, remaining pleasing and warm watches. Not a bad legacy, really.
