Don't You Forget about Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes

The angst-ridden films of John Hughes remain vital viewing to a generation of writers old enough to have seen The Breakfast Club in theaters, and this collection of musings from 20 such contributors could be too much of a good thing for even die-hard Hughes fans. Standouts include Steve Almond's essay about his late-blooming infatuation with Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Ryan Boudinot's dissection of Weird Science (it's ""a masturbation fantasy for boys who haven't yet figured out how to masturbate""). Most contributors, however, approach the same films (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Bueller) from similar, fawning perspectives, and the unfortunate result is a pile-up of overthought but underdeveloped essays with an ironic high school term paper sensibility. Elizabeth Searle, for example, pens a lengthy discourse about Molly Ringwald's scream in Sixteen Candles, and Mary Sullivan likens practically any Hughes film to Cinderella. Readers who, like the contributors, feel indebted to Hughes for enlightening their adolescence, may want to pick this up and spot read it.