Sixteen Candles (1984) on Netflix
On her sixteenth birthday Samantha Baker's family is too busy with her sister's wedding to notice. She pines for senior Jake Ryan while freshman Ted keeps flirting with her.
- Netflix3.8/5
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- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
Samantha Baker hopes her sixteenth birthday will start a good year, but her family is consumed by her older sister Ginny's wedding the next day and forgets the date. At school she fills out a friend's quiz and admits her crush on Jake Ryan, a senior who has noticed her watching him. Jake asks his friend Rock about her and mentions he is unhappy with his girlfriend Caroline's partying. On the bus home, Samantha deflects the attentions of Ted, a freshman. Her grandparents arrive in town with a foreign exchange student, Long Duk Dong, and take over her bedroom, leaving her on the sofa, and they send Dong with her to the school dance that night.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sixteen Candles (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After John Hughes was fired from Mr. Mom in 1983, he resumed pre-production on Sixteen Candles as his directorial debut. Once he was rehired on Mr. Mom, Ned Tanen greenlit both that film and The Breakfast Club at Universal under a three-year $30 million contract, on condition Sixteen Candles came out first.
- For the part of Ted, Hughes saw actors including Jim Carrey, Jon Cryer, Keith Coogan and Ralph Macchio, but said every kid who read did the stereotyped high school nerd thing with thick glasses and ballpoint pens in the pocket, until Michael came in and played it straight.
- For the male lead it had come down to Schoeffling and Viggo Mortensen, with Ringwald pursuing Mortensen to get the role, while Emilio Estevez also auditioned for Jake.
- In December 1984, Ringwald and Hall both won Young Artist Awards for their roles, becoming the first and only juvenile performers in the history of those awards to win Best Leading Actress and Best Leading Actor for the same film.
- The film initially received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, but Hughes successfully lobbied for it to be released with a PG rating instead.
- Sixteen Candles was filmed mainly in and around the Chicago North Shore suburbs of Evanston, Skokie and Highland Park, Illinois during the summer of 1983, when leads Ringwald and Hall were both 15 years old.
