Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986)

Andie (Molly Ringwald) is in her final year of high school. She lives her father who is unemployed and depressed over his wife's abandonment of the family. 

After attracting the attention of wealthy kid Blane (Andrew McCarthy), Andie finds herself in the crosshairs of Steff (James Spader), Blane's best friend, who is determined to undermine her unintended shaking of the school's hierarchy.

This new relationship is also driving a wedge between Andie and Duckie,  who has pined in secret for her for years.

Looking back over the blog last year, I found I was falling into a familiar groove of focusing almost completely on action and action-adjacent movies. Compared with previous years, last year felt like I was just treading water, with little experimentation or curiosity. 

For 2026, I am making a concerted effort to expand the blog’s horizons and stretch some muscles I have ignored. 

I was introduced to John Hughes movies as a teenager.

I had seen plenty of his nineties fare by then - the juggernaut of the Home Alones, along with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Uncle Buck and Christmas Vacation were familiar staples - but I only became aware of him as a creative force at high school.

My media studies teacher ran a course based around teen movies from the fifties on, and one of the films we watched was The Breakfast Club. I liked the movie but the biggest thing I took away was a massive crush on Ally Sheedy’s Alison.

I watched Some Kind of Wonderful a few years later, and once again, I liked the movie a lot (I also came away with a big crush on Mary Stuart Masterson’s Watts).

Watching Some Kind of Wonderful before Pretty In Pink was probably a bad idea - I was aware of the changes made to the latter’s ending, and how Hughes' regrets over the reshoots inspired Some Kind of Wonderful. 

Having that awareness made Pretty In Pink feel like a first draft. And who wants to watch the first draft of something that was improved later?

What utter rubbish. 

Even watching the movie through the lens of its successor, Pretty In Pink has plenty to recommend it. 

In the lead, Molly Ringwald is terrific - she grounds the movie with a fierce sense of integrity. She encapsulates the Hughes protagonist - a smart teenager who is still wracked with self-doubt - but balances this with a flinty sense of independence. Andie has had to group fast to help her family, and RIngwald never loses sight of that. 

As her would-be beau, McCarthy is a bit of a blank slate - it kind of works for the character, since Andie and everyone else seems to project their assumptions onto him. This is a theme that Some Kind of Wonderful would pick up and run with in the arc of Lea Thompsons' Amanda Jones.

Aside from Ringwald, the film's standout is James Spader. Coolly sauntering through the movie with half-lidded eyes, he is a  genuinely loathsome super-villain. His disdain for Andie is completely class-coded, and coloured by jealousy: She previously rejected his advances, and he cannot stand that his status means nothing with her. 

I found Cryer grating. I could not see Andie being won over by his antics. Considering the changes to the ending, I wonder if the filmmakers re-edited the rest of the film with footage of Duckie that diminished him as a potential romantic rival for Blane.

I will say the one scene with him that works is when Andie arrives at the dance and finds Duckie waiting to escort her inside. It is a lovely scene, and a moment of redemption for Duckie that ultimately gets sidelined for the traditional romantic finale. 

I was so won over by the movie, once Blane and Andie get together, I completely checked out. 

One sad realisation I had while watching the movie was realising how class-conscious it is - and how this has almost completely disappeared from mainstream Hollywood movies.

I am not talking about some deep critique of Western or US capitalism: I mean characters who have real concerns about money and how they are going to make it day to day. 

It informs everything: Andie’s thoughts about her future and her father, the conflict between the popular kids and the outsiders, and Andie’s conflicts with Blane. 

While the movie is realistic about the importance of money to solve problems, it does not see the accumulation of wealth as a virtue: Andie is worried if dating Blane could make her superficial.

Aside from Sinners, which is set during the Great Depression, I am struggling to remember a mainstream movie where class and economic concerns were a part of the diegesis.

A fine showcase for Ringwald, Pretty In Pink may fumble the ending, but it is definitely worth a watch.

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