Friday, August 7, 2009
John Hughes RIP
Director John Hughes has left the building, and gone to that great screening room in the sky.
In a career that spanned a few highs and many more high money making artistic lows, he has left behind a legacy of a significant contribution to popular cinema.
Whilst have happily avoided his entire post 1990s output, we have to admit the guilty pleasure of having enjoyed much of his earlier work.
The Breakfast Club really is where the story should start, with Hughes practically inventing the 1980s teen flick genre. The film had a great energy, a great cast, a superb soundtrack and a story that took a whole weekend to write. Hughes followed up the hit with some further polished teenage angst films, the pick of them being Some Kind Of Wonderful and Pretty In Pink.
With further films he strayed much further into the comedy genre with films like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck.
His last great film (in our opinion was) was the Christmas holiday favourite National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, which is great dumb fun.
Where we must leave the story (for all reasons of artistic taste), is where Hughes' most successful (financially) films begins with The Home Alone series, The Beethoven series, Curly Sue and Flubber etc.
We'd prefer to remember his 1980's heyday, (when we were teenagers ourselves) renting his films on VHS with our dodgy hairstyles, and his films' 'kicking' soundtracks, and thinking that middle America must be a better place to grow up in, than the dreary streets of little Britain.
In a career that spanned a few highs and many more high money making artistic lows, he has left behind a legacy of a significant contribution to popular cinema.
Whilst have happily avoided his entire post 1990s output, we have to admit the guilty pleasure of having enjoyed much of his earlier work.
The Breakfast Club really is where the story should start, with Hughes practically inventing the 1980s teen flick genre. The film had a great energy, a great cast, a superb soundtrack and a story that took a whole weekend to write. Hughes followed up the hit with some further polished teenage angst films, the pick of them being Some Kind Of Wonderful and Pretty In Pink.
With further films he strayed much further into the comedy genre with films like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck.
His last great film (in our opinion was) was the Christmas holiday favourite National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, which is great dumb fun.
Where we must leave the story (for all reasons of artistic taste), is where Hughes' most successful (financially) films begins with The Home Alone series, The Beethoven series, Curly Sue and Flubber etc.
We'd prefer to remember his 1980's heyday, (when we were teenagers ourselves) renting his films on VHS with our dodgy hairstyles, and his films' 'kicking' soundtracks, and thinking that middle America must be a better place to grow up in, than the dreary streets of little Britain.
Labels: john hughes, national lampoons christmas vacation
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]