YA: Your Athenaeum

New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is another entry in the Brat Pack film collection, Sixteen Candles. From Roger Ebert’s 1984 review:

“Sixteen Candles” is a sweet and funny movie about two of the worst things that can happen to a girl on her sixteenth birthday: (1) Her grandparents shrieking “Look! She’s finally got her boobies!” and (2) her entire family completely and totally forgetting that it’s even her birthday. The day goes downhill from there, because of (3) her sister’s wedding to a stupid lunkhead, (4) her crush on the best-looking guy in the senior class, and (5) the long, involved story about how a freshman boy named the Geek managed to get possession of a pair of her panties and sell looks at them for a dollar each to all the guys in the locker room.

If “Sixteen Candles” begins to sound a little like an adolescent raunch movie, maybe it’s because I haven’t suggested the style in which it’s acted and directed. This is a fresh and cheerful movie with a goofy sense of humor and a good ear for how teenagers talk. It doesn’t hate its characters or condescend to them, the way a lot of teenage movies do; instead, it goes for human comedy and finds it in the everyday lives of the kids in its story.