Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Teen movies cure all ills

My cure for bad day resulting in headache like a ring of steel - get into bed with a Green and Black hot chocolate and watch Pretty in Pink (archetypal American high school tormented- love- across -the- social- divide).

Reasons I love it:
  • Andi’s best friend Jenna casually smoking a fag during gym class
  • Molly Ringwald, red-headed teen goddess, signally failing to come across as white trash from the wrong side of the tracks.
  • Some good inventive cusses - “I hope they shrivel up and fall off” “You retarded little dwarf”
  • Set dressing - the girliest bedroom in the world, complete with pink princess telephone by her bed.
  • Harry Dean Stanton as her heartbroken dad, lifting it way out of teen film league.
  • Duckie miming, wordperfect, to Try A Little Tenderness
  • The club bouncer (cameo by Andrew Dice Clay) practising his smooth lighting-a-cigarette moves when no one’s watching.
  • Andi’s job in an indie record shop - I would’ve died for it as a teenager.
  • Annie Potts fabulous as her boss, with retro 50s pad in Chinatown.
  • James Spader, wonderfully obnoxious, arrogant, trust fund scum - you’ve got to hand it to the boy who goes to high school in a white linen suit and gold watch.
  • An unexpected homage to The Smiths running through it.
(Getting a bit dependent on it, though I have some way to go before I catch up with ex-flatmate F’s record of watching Legally Blond 9000 times.)

Vote for your favourite teen film here… or if you really hate the genre, what film was your favourite when a teenager?

(And if you are in fact a teenager right now, shouldn’t you be out stealing cars or something?)

7 comments:

Adrian said...

I love teen movies. They're so far from reality it' awesome.

I think my favourite was 10 things I hate about you but I tend to enjoy most of them, even though they don't hold in the memomory for very long.

Wyndham said...

I was always more of a Breakfast Club man myself.

But nobody can do obnoxious like James Spader. nobody!

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

Yes, teen movies. Fun. Frivolous. I love 'em.

Ferris Bheuler's Day Off. [Don't know the spelling of 'Bheuler' but I've watched that movie several times].

Annie said...

Adrian - Julia Stiles is v cool. I like the teen movies that have a bit of bite like 10 things...

Wyndham - The Breakfast Club! I could recite the script backwards, sadly enough. Judd Nelson's character - first major crush. Though we always liked the hippy girl better before she got cleaned up and cut her hair.

GG - Also love Ferris Bheuler. Though the most touching speech he gives about his best friend, marrying the first woman who sleeps with him out of gratitude, sounded like it was coming from a forty year old scriptwriter rather than a 16 year old schoolboy.

Anonymous said...

Chocolate is supposed not to be good for headaches - along with cheese and red wine. Hope you didn't suffer long.

3rd daughter said...

visiting via jonnyb.

breakfast club is my favourite teen movie even if i was in my 20s when it was released. borrowed the video from the store and returned the empty box so had the tape for about 9 months before we finally returned it; it became a ritual to watch it when there was nothing else to do.

Annie said...

Thanks Pat. It seems harsh and cruel that chocolate and red wine are bad for you (and for headaches). But I felt that carrot juice somehow did not have the same comfort factor.

3rd Daughter - teen is a state of mind, you can enjoy it long past your teens. Which is fortunate for me really.