Worst John Hughes film ever

Which film by the racist, poor person hater John Hughes is the most hideous?


He must never be forgiven for Long Duk Dong.

(Okay, I sorta liked Vacation, Planes Trains & Automobiles and Breakfast Club)

As a teenager, The Breakfast Club was one of my favourite films - I found it moving, inspiring and hilarious.

I don't know a fat lot about Hughes, and although there's no denying that he's cheesey, I'm amazed that you label him a "racist, poor person hater." That's a fairly harsh charge - why is he worse than most other directors?

P.

The protagonists are ALWAYS white, filthy rich pretty kids, (with the exception of Molly Ringwald in Some Kind of Wonderful - she plays a working class kid who lives in ....an apartment) and the rare characters who are not are always made to be ridiculous "others"

"Long Duk Dong" is the worst. In Sixteen Candles, he is a Chinese exchange student who is such an idiot that he can't use silverware, dresses and acts like a geek, and an oriental gong goes off when he enters the room. The character himself is not the joke, just the fact that he's chinese.

His films also are extremely pro-wealthy. In "Home Alone", the rich snotty white kid left home alone gives third degree burns & fractures, and practically kills the two bumbling saps that have the misfortune of trying to rob his mansion.

Remember in the 3 stooges, when the rich would get their comeuppance in the form of a pie or a great cutdown from a Stooge? Never with Hughes. He likes to kick the down-and-out.

I am a 'minority' poor individual living/working/studying in the 'inner-city' of Los Angeles.

AND I have to say that I love the Breakfeast Club!

(i could probably draw you a list of similar individuals who also love SOME of Hughes' films!)

Granted, those movies do center exclusively on wealthy Anglos(i'm Hispanic or Latino to those more radical). Still, those films do speak to a universal teen 'angst' mentality.

Sure, he made many awful films. But he also made many films that resonate with many individuals!@

Home Alone is a comedy. It's not my favourite film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not offensive.

Yeah, OK, the first time I saw it I wasn't keen on the level of violence inflicted on the villains, but then I thought about it. It's basically a cartoon with live actors. Needless to say, any one of the injuries they sustain would probably kill them, but it's ridiculous slapstick and not supposed to be taken seriously. At all.

Item the second - "practically kills the two bumbling saps that have the misfortune of trying to rob his mansion." They don't "have the misfortune", they deliberately set out to rob people, using the goodwill of the Christmas season as a cover / method of doing so. Not content with that, they also destroy each home they rob. I'm not entirely sure why you give them sympathy in this respect. If you're going to take it that seriously then consider that the kid is alone, they break in and know he's there and they threaten to kill him. In reality I'm fairly confident that if he'd shot them both dead it would have been self defence.

Home Alone wouldn't be funny if the criminals were trying to rob a poor household, and there would have been fewer room for gags. It also makes you think that robbing anyone, regardless of wealth, is equally unacceptable.

"The protagonists are ALWAYS white, filthy rich pretty kids" - IIRC in Breakfast Club they're all troubled; Bender is abused and poor, Bryan has tried to kill himself, the rich Jock is an asshole....together they overcome their problems. OK, there aren't any coloured people in there, but maybe that's not his background, maybe he's not trying to say anything about coloured people's experiences.

Re: "Long Duk Dong"...well, I haven't seen the film but I have lived in China, and I have to inform you that it's entirely possible that an exchange student wouldn't be able to use silverware and would almost certainly dress differently to a Westerner. I know it's not acceptable to lampoon someone for their nationality, but I thought I'd mention this anyway.

Please feel free to continue hating John Hughes (I'm actually not a fan of his, honestly!), but it seems to me that you'd only be happy if he made a film about a poor white family who were helped out by their large number of friends from multiple ethnic backgrounds.

John Hughes films are lightweight, Hollywood, sickly schmaltz, and I'd rather criticise him for that than the odd hidden agenda which you seem to believe he has.

I've lived in Japan, and visited Hong Kong, and find it very unlikely that a kid smart enough to be an exchange student would try to use a fork & knife as though they were chopsticks. People in both countries have very good fashion sense, unlike the geek in the film

I wasn't trying to imply that robbing a house was okay, just that they were unlucky to pick McClunky Gherkin's house. I suppose I should have more sympathy for the little white rich kid whose parents can afford to FLY THE ENTIRE FAMILY OF 15 TO EUROPE FOR CHRISTMAS, and none for the stereotypical robbers who suggest that robbers are all evil, and only do so because they are lazy and loath to work. I never saw anything to indicate that the kid couldn't at any minute make a run to the neighbor's house and call police, but no, he'd rather continue dropping anvils on people's heads. God forbid they get Mom's pearls.

I know this is a comedy, but I prefer comedies that pick on the well-off, not the down-and-out.

And yes, I would be happy if his films were more diverse, to reflect America a little more accurately. There are many good comedies that do. The fact that Hughes' films have been less and less popular throught the years is illustrative of a change in American tastes, IMO.

...my high school. The movie was pretty representative of the population that feeds the school.

Sixteen Candles was not far off the mark either from a demographic perspective if you exclude Long Duk Dong nonsense. Sixteen Candles was filmed in the same area as Breakfast Club. As a matter of fact, the church scene at the end was the church I used to see all the time as I rode my bike to the beach. Out of 10,000 people in our town, there were a handful of black families at the time. Few of any other ethnicity.

Part of the reason I couldn't stand to go back to where I grew up. Nothing like diversity being considered shades of white.

Later,
JM

Some Kind of Wonderful is a really nice romantic comedy. If you voted for that, PFFFFFFFFFT!
The Professor

Although some of them had genuine comedic moments, for the most part I have to agree with Gringo on this - his films were definitely not representative of the majority of even white Americans, let alone African Americans, Latinos or Asians.

That said, his filmmaking is much better than the shit being marketed to the same age group today.

Hollywood is just so full of crap.