In Back-to-School Hindsight, John Hughes Looks Terrible

When the world rushed to eulogize John Hughes, Christopher Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune held off. He wanted to watch Hughes’ movies again. “I had suspected these films might be disturbing in hindsight,” he writes. “I had no idea how disturbing.” There’s drunk driving, insinuations of date rape, and worse, and “the tone of Hughes’ films are so light the mixed signals become hard to stomach.”

We remember Hughes as providing nearly documentary-like account of teen life, but he was “more like a bad journalist,” getting the drama right, but not the details. So maybe it’s time, as a new school year dawns, to admit we can ditch the, to quote Ferris Bueller, “geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids and dweebies,” who populated Hughes’ still-dominant image of teen life. “High school clichés, you have nothing to lose but the protractors in your pockets!” (More John Hughes stories.)