We thought it would be fun to rank our favorite flicks that the late John Hughes wrote or directed. What do you think tops our list? Here are our twelve favorites:12. She's Having A Baby
11. The Great Outdoors
10. Home Alone
9. Uncle Buck
8. Weird Science
7. Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
6. Some Kind Of WonderfulI know most everyone prefers The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles but for me, Some Kind Of Wonderful is the John Hughes movie. It's crazy quotable. Do you know how many t-shirts Threadless could create from Watts alone?
"Don't go mistaking paradise for a pair of long legs."
"You can't judge a book by its cover. Yeah, but you can tell how much it's gonna cost."
"The only things I care about in this goddamn life are me and my drums and you."
The characters in Wonderful seemed more realistic than in his other films. I've known girls like Watts and Amanda Jones. And while I'd love to tell you I was like the artistic Keith, the truth is I was always more of a Duckie.
But it's the ending that makes the film: Amanda Jones decides she doesn't need a man to complete her and decides to stand on her own for awhile. Keith realizes that the girl of his dreams, everything he's ever wanted, has been right there in front of him the entire time and chases down the road after Watts.
"You look good wearing my future." --Chag
5. National Lampoon's VacationMy family is a classy bunch so we have always sort of identified with the Griswolds. It is a tradition to watch National Lampoon's Vacation on vacation.
If you can't quote at least 10 lines from the film, you're probably too high-brow to hang out with me. My favorite lines are delivered by the late great John Candy toward the end of the film. If you love this movie, I'll bet you know what lines they are.
One of my high school boyfriends even had a dog-and-leash vs. RV incident, though his dog actually survived. Thankfully, we haven't had any Aunt Edna episodes yet. --Heather
4. Pretty In PinkThe plot was played out. The direction was heavy-handed at times. The characters weren't always sympathetic, or believable, as High School students. The wrong guy got the girl in the end. And Andrew Dice Clay was in it, for chrissake. But damn, Pretty In Pink was a good movie.
I've already gone on the record as having deep, some might say ridiculous, love for Pretty In Pink and I'll say it again: I LOVE Pretty In Pink. Love with a capital L - pink puffy heart - V - E. I love Andie. I love Duckie. I love Steff, even if he looked like a 35-year-old stalker on a permanent bender. Hell, I even love Blane and all his wussy Blaneness. Pick it apart and the movie is flawed but put it together and it's a bitterly sweet confection perfect for any girl (and let's face it, a lot of the guys too) growing up in the '80s. To me, Pretty In Pink will always be quintessential Hughes. And that's enough for me. --Tania
3. Ferris Bueller's Day OffJune 1986. I had just returned home from a 60-day training cruise that took me from Massachusetts to Florida, across the Atlantic and home again. I got drunk in Fort Lauderdale, body surfed in Jacksonville, ate burgers and drank pints at the Hard Rock in London, got tattooed and even drunker in Dublin, and for the other 48 or so days lived on a 543' ship and pitched, yawed and rolled our way around the Atlantic. This was how my freshman year at Massachusetts Maritime Academy wrapped up, and to think a mere six months later I would withdraw due to poor grades. Shocker. Anyway, my grades and exuberant participation in alcohol-related extracurricular activities are not what we are here for. I only bring it up because three days after arriving home from this God-awful maritime experience (the interludes of outrageous fun notwithstanding), I was sitting in a movie theater watching Matthew Broderick give filmgoers, particularly the John Hughes fans among us, a character we wouldn't soon forget doing things we only wished we could do and get away with in a movie that probably has the greatest repeatability factor save for Better Off Dead or Die Hard. It is certainly on the short list of movies that no matter at what point I come across it in my surfing, it must be viewed. I also think that if you look it up on IMDb and go to the memorable quotes section, that's pretty much the whole movie. Really.
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Save Ferris. --Mr. Big Dubya
2. The Breakfast ClubI spent most of my time in high school (hence, most of the early '80s) hanging out with my inner circle of friends as we tried to convince ourselves that we we were above all of the high school crap and that, yeah we weren't invited to any of the parties with the "in" crowd, but we didn't want to go to those parties anyway. We were better than that.
In other words, lying to ourselves.
For better or for worse, this was our high school existence. I hated high school. So the last thing I wanted to do two years after graduation was to watch a movie about high school. I figured it was just the typical feel-good, party all the time, high school crap.
So, it wasn't until I got married in 1992 that I was finally convinced to watch the movie. And, as the end credits started rolling, I started kicking myself for not watching it years earlier. Turns out that John Hughes crafted a true high school movie masterpiece when he made this film. Never before was high school life so accurately depicted on film as it was here. It wasn't just a matter of representing all of the cliques that exist and the way people in different groups treat one another. And it most decidedly wasn't the fact that the (inevitable) "we have more in common than we thought" moment of realization occurred. It was the more telling and more accurate moment of realization that, despite the barriers that had been broken down in the group, that everything would be the same again come Monday morning. So very true. It's a simply brilliant story, that never fails to touch me no matter how many times I've watched it. (And that's a lot now.)
Just recently, I had my own personal Breakfast Club-like experience. Despite my aforementioned loathing of high school, I went to my my 25th reunion. My inner circle of high school friends didn't show, so I was forced to mingle with the crowd. I ended up going out afterward with a group of people who never would have hung out together during school. And we had a blast. The old barriers were all gone, and we were just people who hadn't seen each other for 25 years hanging out and having fun. Every one of us was a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Every one of us regretted not realizing it during school; it might have made things easier for all of us. But that's okay, because with age comes wisdom. Or at least the recognition that in high school you were a lot dumber than you are today.
John Hughes knew that. --Dave
1. Sixteen CandlesAs soon as I heard Samantha Baker utter the words, "I can't believe this. They fucking forgot my birthday," I knew that Sixteen Candles was going to be one of the best movies I'd ever see. I've watched it so many times in my lifetime, and yet every time I see it I'm struck once again by how absolutely awesome it is.
I'd be hard-pressed to come up with just one favorite part. I love the scene when Samantha's family discovers Long Duck Dong passed out on the front lawn – He’s three sheets to the wind! Drunk as a skunk! - and how he describes driving Grandpa's automo-beel in to the lake. The entire school dance part, especially when Farmer Ted charges his fellow nerds a buck a head for a glimpse of Sam's underwear, is simply awesome, as is Jake Ryan's epic house party and the resulting aftermath.
Sixteen Candles had already been crowned cult film royalty by the time I got around to seeing it, yet there was a lot about the film that I related to. I identified with the characters; I got the underlying sense of humor. I remember feeling as though there was finally a movie out there that had been made for someone like me, and that? Was a very good feeling, indeed. --Mamatulip
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We showed you ours, now show us yours! What are your favorite John Hughes films? Let us know in the comments!
