It’s no stretch to say that Disney’s new film Prom is a squeaky clean affair, but according to Washington Post film critic Sandie Angulo Chen, this is apparently a bad thing.  Prompting responses from Newsbusters and Christian Toto, Chen’s piece laments the lack of edge, angst and subversion in Prom, stating that the event is associated in cinema with things like the iconic pig’s blood prank from Carrie, and the race to lose one’s virginity in American Pie.  She wonders why there are no violent outcasts or brooding bad boys that smoke cigarettes, as though the House of Mouse is a studio that has a reputation for delivering hard-hitting works of gritty social realism.

A trap many film critics fall in to is that they feel that movies have a responsibility to speak absolute truths and subvert the norm, which is a nice way of saying that they want movies to conform to, and confirm, their own worldview.  Just look at Roger Ebert, a critic who loses his mind any time a movie treats violence in a manner he doesn’t deem politically correct.  A good recent example would be the way Ebert childishly punished James Gunn’s Super for being too violent by spoiling the ending in the opening paragraph of his review.  This is the same Roger Ebert who scolded Michael Medved for doing the exact same thing to Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby in 2004.  But I digress, critiquing a movie is one thing, actively punishing it is another.  Of course, Chen doesn’t stoop to Ebert’s level, but what she does do is expect the movie to behave according to her perceptions.

I’m not criticizing Chen for attempting to put Prom in the context of the real world, one reason we enjoy movies is to think about how they relate to life.  But Chen’s review seems to confuse real life with “reel life.”  She acts as though Prom has a responsibility to portray the titular event in a way that she deems realistic, yet her view of the activities that go with said event seems to be informed primarily by other movies.  This causes her to come across as an out-of-touch film critic living in a movie bubble. 

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In the well-known 1980’s film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Mr. Bueller famously says, “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” That line could refer to the death of John Hughes who wrote and directed that film and who died last week at the young age of 59. However, that line could also refer to some of the themes from some of Hughes’ most well-known and iconic films that are still loved by many today.

Admittedly, I have not seen every John Hughes movie. Before his passing, though, I had seen only a few of his most well-known pictures like “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and “Home Alone.”  Last weekend, after the death of Hughes, I watched two of his other well-known movies, “Pretty in Pink” and “Sixteen Candles,” for the first time in commemoration of his death and to see why these films had such an effect on the young people of the 1980’s.

Because I was not a teenager during the 80’s, I did not have the opportunity to watch Hughes’ movies during the decade that Hughes helped define for so many young moviegoers. I was a child of the “Home Alone” era, not a teenager of the “Breakfast Club.” (more…)