The first half of “Weird Science” (1985) is so good – classic teen comedy from writer/director John Hughes – you forget how badly the second half runs off the rails. Rejects from “Mad Max?” Cruise missiles? Bill Paxton as Jabba the Hutt? Granted, the ship rights itself for a semi-sensible ending that’s a cross between “Risky Business” and “Sixteen Candles” but you’re left wondering what could have been. Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith are classic high school dorks who use early computer technology to build a beautiful woman (Kelly LeBrock) for immoral purposes. She ends up teaching them a valuable lesson.
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From the very start, with its elegant montage of kitschy postcards set to Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983) lets the moviegoer know they’re going to get a much stronger effort than what is normally given to a road movie. Written by John Hughes and directed by Harold Ramis, one family’s cross-country quest for a theme-park vacation is an epic comedy that still makes some “best” lists two generations hence. A formula plot played out by masters, suburban dad Chevy Chase leads a cast so deep, you probably won’t realize Jane Krakowski was in it until the credits.
Meet the new kids. Same as the old kids. Having been a teen during the Golden Age of Teen Movies, I consider myself a connoisseur of teen movies. John Hughes would be proud of “Booksmart” (2019). Two nerdish girls who abstained from fun for the sake of high school achievement find out the day before graduation they could have had just as much gain without all the pain. BTW, there’s a big, unsupervised graduation party that night. Cue the hijinks. Director Olivia Wilde creates perfect cinematic stasis, bringing in sudden comic weirdness every time things get serious, and vice versa.
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