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. 

My personal experience with high school prom wasn’t full of sex and debauchery.  It consisted of a nice group dinner and a dance where a DJ played trendy music at a swanky venue to this day.  I was the same person going out as I was coming in, despite the fact that movies try to sell you on the idea that prom is some sort of rite-of-passage that changes you forever (unless you count the fact that to this day, Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” still prompts uncontrollable rage-vomiting whenever I hear it).  If my prom were a movie, it would probably be rated PG.  It’s a given that many teenagers have prom experiences that would be directed by Bob Clark and earn a hard R-rating, but there are also many with the toned-down experience I had with my friends.  That isn’t to say that Prom is at all realistic, but rather, that the experience of prom isn’t the always the time teens use to indulge in bad behavior.  A shiny, clean perspective like Prom is perfectly acceptable.

Granted, Chen concedes that not all teen-themed fair needs to be full of horny teens doing drugs, and it seems she simply didn’t care for the movie, which is fine.  But she forgets that movies can depict certain events like a high school prom in whatever manner they choose, be it raunchy like American Pie, horrifying like Carrie, or kid-friendly like Prom.  Toto noted in his piece that a movie can be whatever it wants to be, so long as it is engaging, and I agree with that statement completely  There are many ways to approach telling any kind of story or theme.  Critics should remember to criticize a movie for what it is, not for what it isn’t, unless of course, it isn’t good.

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.”

However, after watching “Pretty” and “Sixteen” last weekend, it is clear why Hughes was such a phenomenon as a writer for so many young people of that generation. Each Hughes film that I have seen has a simple and often an easily relatable premise. A group of complicated and unique teenagers spend detention together. A mischievous high school boy skips school with his friends. A high school girl deals with social and class distinctions in dating.

However, these overall plots do not tell the whole stories of these films because in these films, the characters are dealing with more than the premise suggests and many of those characters discover things about themselves and about others that they might have missed had they not looked “around every once in a while.” The group in detention learns about how complicated fellow students who are often defined by high school “stereotypes” (i.e. the athlete, the nerd, the rebel etc.) can be. The high school boy who skips class realizes, among other things, his best friend’s deep frustration with his father who seems to love his car more than his son. The girl who deals with class distinctions learns how people can defy their social classes and their peers if they choose to.

Renowned film critic Roger Ebert recently wrote, “Few directors have left a more distinctive or influential body of work than John Hughes. The creator of the modern American teenager film, who died Thursday in New York, made a group of films that are still watched and quoted today.”

Even though many would say that John Hughes reached his peak in the 1980’s, people are still watching and enjoying his films today for the first time (I can personally attest to that fact).  The number of tributes to Hughes over the past several days shows how important Hughes was as a writer and as a director. Taking Ferris Bueller’s advice, since John Hughes died last week, many people have stopped and looked around and they have realized how much they will miss John Hughes.