John Hughes has, or at least should have garnered some notoriety for his subtle stylizing as director, which, alas, with this directorial debut, hadn't had too much time to settle in as subtle, for no matter how entertaining a lot of this film's stylistic touches are, whether it be some unsubtle visuals or, so help me, the sound of a gong following almost most mentions of Long Duk Dong's name (Racist or not, it's still funny to me), or something in between, there are aspects that feel a tad obnoxious in their freneticism and betrayal of subtlety. Hey, as Ebert told us with that "high comedy" statement, enjoyment can make you forgive a lot of things (Hey, he took a "black" wife no one said that he wasn't racist against Asians), and while I enjoyed this film, I can't quite forgive some of its problems. That's not good, because an almost 24-year-old Justin Henry played Ringwald's love interest, which is a little disturbing, at least to me, because everyone else liked this film more, to the point of getting past the disturbances. which makes it a little harder to ignore the age differences among her peers. Calm down, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" nitpickers, because not every kid in this film is overage, as Molly Ringwold was, in fact, 16 when this film was released. Shoot, I guess that reinforces my delusion that I'm too old to be so young, because I was sure shamelessly laughing at Long Duk Dong, and not just because Gedde Watanabe was almost 30 at the time he played this teen role. He must not have been a spring chicken at the time this film was made, because at a certain age, you get to be a little racially insensitive, and you don't believe me, just look at Roger Ebert, because he was already a little old when this film came out, and sure enough, he tried to praise "The Donger need food!" as "high comedy". You know that John Hughes had way more than sixteen candles on his birthday cake when he remembered that song vividly enough to get Stray Cats to cover that, because it was too old by 1984, alone. "Sixteen candles make a lovely light, but not as bright as your eyes tonight!".
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