Pretty in Pink holds up. It holds up as a high school drama that grants its characters dignity and treats their problems like they matter. It holds up as the place to find Molly Ringwald’s signature role. It holds up as a succinct look at class tension from a teenager’s view. It holds up as a top 1980s American nostalgia-bomb full of the time’s sounds and style.
It’s got all that AND character-actor great Harry Dean Stanton as Molly Ringwald’s father. Cool with me.
This is not a deep movie. It’s not ambitious, but it’s smartly put together by first-time director Howard Deutch from a script by John Hughes who was smack in the middle of his 80s hot streak as a teen movie master–if you cared about his mostly rich and all-white world, at least.
The story is a love triangle and from the moment you see these characters, you instantly know who they are.
After the camera pans across her world of run-down houses, beat-up cars, bad roads and a railroad track that runs clean through it all, we watch Molly Ringwald’s Andie get dressed for the day. Before we see her face, we see close-up images of her pulling up stockings and socks and zippers. She applies make-up and rummages through a cluttered drawer of necklaces and earrings. It’s not exploitative in any way, though (this is firmly on the “chick flick” end of teen movies; it’s about love, not sex). It’s a character moment. It tells us that Andie cares about style. She’s into details. It’s a star’s intro.
In the first three minutes of the movie, via dialogue with her under-employed father (Stanton, grizzled as ever), we learn that she makes her own clothes for dirt cheap. There’s no money for the designer stuff, so Andie has to get creative and we like her for it. (Also, shout-out to the costume department for her wardrobe here. It consistently looks homemade, never quite perfect, but also the product of a distinct vision that leans retro. Pearls, floral patterns. Lots of care went into it. When the rich girls at school make fun of her clothes, we hate those bitches.)
Two very different guys want her badly.
In one corner is Jon Cryer’s endlessly wisecracking Duckie. He’s been friends with Andie since they were little kids and he’s been tortured by his love for her the whole damn time. Like her, he’s from the poor side of town and, also like her, he makes up for it with some serious thrift store style. Duckie rocks an Elvis Costello look with an added fixation on bolo ties, hats, vests and suspenders. Duckie is our comic relief and probably the most liked character here, tied maybe with Annie Potts as Andie’s bohemian, record store-owning “mother figure” and confidant.
In the other corner is Andrew McCarthy’s Blaine. He looks exactly like a guy named Blaine. He’s the rich kid. Drives a BMW. Brooks Brothers from head to toe. I guess he’s “cute”, I don’t know. That’s not my department. To me, he’s got a weird high voice and a creepy smile, but Andie is all swoons over him, so okay, I’ll go with it. Also, to the film’s credit, Blaine is not a total douchebag. He’s got shitty friends (such as James Spader, ultra-slick and memorably obnoxious), but he’s a nice guy. He’s got real feelings for Andie. She’s not merely a conquest. (Again, we’re in “chick flick” territory.)
The wedge between Andie and Duckie is that she has zero romantic feelings for him. They’re close friends and that’s all, folks. He flirts with her constantly, but plays it off like a joke to protect his longing little heart.
The wedge between her and Blaine is their class differences. He’s rich, she’s poor and, being teenagers, they don’t have the maturity to work this out. Their excursions into each others’ worlds don’t go well.
We see enough of these characters’ good sides to know that they’ll all figure things out eventually. In time. Over the years.
This movie hasn’t got time for that, though. And neither do we.
Just give us a nice prom night, already!
And that’s what the movie does. The music soars, lips meet, eyes twinkle and tomorrow doesn’t matter.
Did these characters make perfect choices in end? Probably not. And so what? They’re young.