Three's a Crowd

Pretty in Pink
Director: Howard Deutch
Cast: Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Harry Dean Stanton, Annie Potts
Released: February 28, 1986

Spoilers? For anyone who really cares that much?

I thought this movie was directed by John Hughes, but he just wrote it. Of all the Molly Ringwald movie I've reviewed (including The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles), this is the only movie where she ends up with a guy who isn't a complete douche. Don't get me wrong; he's still a douche, just not a COMPLETE one. While not great, the movie didn't make me groan or cringe as much as those two did. 

Molly Ringwald plays Andie, a high school senior who is "poor" so she has to make her own clothes, which she is made fun of for. I think they're supposed to be these amazing creations, but she tends to favor floral patterns, so she ends up looking like a ninety-year-old granny especially when she's wearing her old granny hat and old granny glasses. She also likes to wear a lot of pink, hence the title of the movie. Look, I am also a redhead who will wear the occasional pink top, but even I know my limitations and redheads should not wear that much pink! I put "poor" in quotes because she and her father live in a house (on the small side) and she drives a car and they're able to own a dog and take care of it. I think "poor" in this case just means they're not part of the really wealthy crowd. Her mom left her and her dad and her dad (Harry Dean Stanton) can only get part time work. 

John Hughes loves giving Molly Ringwald's characters a rich boyfriend (or in the case of The Breakfast Club, he made her character rich and gave her a boyfriend from the "wrong side of the tracks") and in this movie the rich boy from school who likes her is Blane (Andrew McCarthy). On the other side of the spectrum, Andie's longtime friend, Duckie (Jon Cryer) is in love with her. Even though he is scared to tell her that he loves her, he's often coming on to her, so she has to know that he likes her. Unless she thinks he's just joking around or being the big perv he is because we see him hitting on other girls. I honestly thought it was going to be revealed that Duckie is gay and he was just compensating for it by being so overly heterosexual. I mean, it is ridiculous how much he comes on to Andie and being that she doesn't seem him as anything other than a friend, it's also a bit icky, but she doesn't seem to be bothered or uncomfortable about it. But then I remembered that this is a John Hughes movie. While I found Duckie to be on the annoying side most of the time, I did laugh at the scene where he's thrown into the girl's bathroom by bullies and thinks the tampon dispenser is a candy machine and is mocked outraged that the boys' restroom doesn't have a "candy machine".

Let's turn this love triangle into a love square! As it isn't enough for both Blane and Duckie to be interested in Andie, let's bring in the super rich and super suave Steff (James Spader) who is a friend of Blane's and doesn't give a f**k about anything. Look, '86 Molly Ringwald was a very cute girl, but to have THREE guys be into her? Let's not get carried away, movie! I had to look up to see how old James Spader was in this movie because not only does he act like he's 30, but he looks like he's 30 too. I was close; he was 25. That's still quite old to play a high schooler! Of course, we all know Steff (what kind of guy's name is that, anyway?) is off the table, so we all wait with bated breath to see who Andie will end up with at the end of the movie. Did my tone sound sarcastic enough?

Duckie is upset when he finds out that Andie is going on a date with Blane. (I will admit "That's a major appliance; that's not a name!" is a great line.) For one thing, he's part of the rich group who makes fun of both of them for not having as much money even though Blane himself has never said anything bad about Andie or her finances.

Andie and Blane have a terrible first date. This guy is such a chump; he takes her to a party at Steff's house which is full of the people who are mean to Andie. All that aside, who takes someone to a party on the first date? That's a horrible first date...a party is something you go to once you're a couple with somebody. She even tells him she doesn't want to go to a party because they're his friends and he tells her if they're going to try to make "this" work, then they're going to have to hang out with each other friend's anyway. I don't think that's true. Who says you have to hang out with your significant other's friends? Nobody, that's who. Oh, and even before that he makes a rude comment about her outfit, asking her if she wants to go home and change when that's the outfit she's wearing for the date! Ouch! He does apologize for taking her to the party once he realizes just how rude his friends are towards Andie. Then they go to a club where they run into, who else, Duckie, who acts like a jerk towards Blane. He's also there with Iona (Annie Potts) who is the manager of the record store Andie works at. She is fifteen years older than both of them and Duckie tries to make Andie jealous by kissing Iona and telling Andie that she's been replaced, but of course she's not jealous. Andie doesn't want Blane to take her home because she doesn't want him to see the shack of a house (which I'm pretty sure is two stories) she lives in, but he does anyway and even though they had a terrible first date, he asks her to the prom and they share a romantic first kiss. *rolls eyes*

Iona was the Lady Gaga before Lady Gaga even existed...literally as this movie was released a month before she was even born. Iona wears some crazy outfits such as a dress made out of vinyl and is always wearing a different wig or hairstyle. She shows Andie her prom dress (which she is still able to fit into, so go Iona) and tells her she can borrow the dress if she wants. Iona and Andie have a big sister/little sister relationship which is really sweet, especially when she's comforting Andie during a scene later on when Andie will get her heart broken.

I need to have a quick Fashion Corner Segment. We see a scene of Andie in gym class about to play volleyball where the mean girls (one of them is played by a young Gina Gershon) are being, well, mean, to her and her friend. What is up with these uniforms? They appear to be blue jumpsuits with collars that button up the front and completed with a belt. WTF? When I was in gym class, we just wore a t-shirt and shorts. Plus they seem to allow the girls to wear not just dangly earrings, but humongous dangly earrings. Pretty sure you're supposed to take all your jewelry off before gym class. Also, it looks like Molly Ringwald legs are all tattooed, but she's wearing these stockings with designs on them; I'm not really sure what's going on there. And what is up with her shoes? They're these white half sneakers/half boots? I'm not sure...what are those? Only in the eighties, am I right?

Oh, and speaking of dangly earrings, there's a scene where Andie and Blane are making out and she's wearing a super dangly earring in one ear (she has three piercings: two in one ear and one in the other and wears one super long dangly earring while also wearing a pair of smaller earrings) and he puts her hand on that side of her face and I am just so worried that his hand is going to get caught in that earring and is going to rip it out of her ear! :::cringes::: But that doesn't happen, although it easily could have!

To Andie's dismay, Blane starts ignoring Andie's phone calls and starts ghosting her. Haha, was Blane the first ever ghoster? Blane does this because he is pressured by Steff who tells him if he hangs out with "trash" like Andie, then he won't be friends with him, but of course we all know Steff has a thing for Andie (which I'm not really sure why, no offense to Andie...maybe he just wants to try to get with her because it's a "challenge"?) so he probably just doesn't want Blane to be with her and Blane, being the wet blanket he is, decides that Steff is right. I don't understand why Blane and Steff are friends as Steff is a jerk to him, but I guess they're friends since they run in the same social circle.

Andie calls Blane out in school and tells him that he should just admit that he's ashamed to be with her AFTER he tells her that he can't go to the prom with her because he asked another girl to the prom and that he "forgot". Bitch, please! Oh my God, if I were that other girl he supposedly asked to the prom before Andie, I would have been PISSED! How do you forget you asked someone else to the prom? Seriously, how. Of course, we know there was never another girl. Cuz while Blane is a f**king idiot, he's not that stupid. Poor Molly Ringwald. Why can't any of her John Hughes movie characters get a decent boyfriend? First she had the super gross Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles who had no qualms about raping his own girlfriend, then perhaps even worse is the thirty-year-old creep Bender from The Breakfast Club who is just absoluetly terrible to Claire and somehow they end up together. In comparison to these two wankers, Blane isn't really that bad, but he's still not great. And it probably is no coincidence that his name is one letter off from being "bland", heh.

Bo Peep! 

It's time for another quick Fashion Corner Segment. Even though she no longer has a date, Andie decides she's still going to the prom. Remember, she still has the offer to borrow Iona's old prom dress which is actually quite cute. It's a pink dress with white flowers that look like polka dots (you have to look closer to make out that they're actually flowers). It doesn't scream prom dress to me; it looks more like something you would wear to a Sunday brunch or a baby shower. 

Andie's dad surprises her with a prom dress, which I personally thought was really ugly. He tells her that it reminds him of Andie's mom and all I could think was that Andie's mom had some terrible taste. It's a strapless pink dress with a full length tulle skirt and dark pink flower designs on the bodice. It also has this plastic-y sheen on the bodice which makes it look really cheap. And of course there's a godawful huge bow around the waist to top it off. Andie seems to really like the dress, though. Instead of choosing between the two dresses (the choice to me is obvious), she decides to cut up both dresses and make what is truly probably the worst prom dress in all of history, probably just the worst dress ever, period. If she had been a contestant on Project Runway she would have been auf'ed on the spot! I can just see Tim Gunn now going over to Andie with a huge frown on his face as he looks up and down at this monstrosity. OMG, this thing is so fugly; I don't know what's going on. We have some bare shoulders, a weird neckline, a unflattering fit, I honestly don't know what she was thinking. I guess even Molly Ringwald herself thought the dress was atrocious, heh. If I were Iona, I would have been PISSED that my perfectly fine dress was ruined. Andie never tells her her plan that she was going to cut up her dress which I thought was a little s****y of her. I bet Iona would have loved to keep this dress and give it to her daughter one day.

At the prom, Duckie gives Andie his "permission" to be with Blane (gee, thanks Duckie) and Blane tells Andie that he loves her. Where the hell did this come from? I guess originally Andie was going to end up with Duckie, but test audiences didn't like that, so they reshot and she ended up with Bland Blane. I personally don't think she should have ended up with either of them. Why couldn't she just pull a Kelly Taylor and declare, "I choose me!"