Andrew McCarthy‘s recent documentary “Brats,” about his time as a teen idol in the 1980s alongside peers like Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy, charted the actor’s path from irritation and outright hostility toward the “brat pack” label to grudging affection, as he recognized that the movies he looked down on while he was doing them — films like “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Less Than Zero,” and “Mannequin” — meant more to an entire generation of filmgoers than more “serious” prestige fare like “The Falcon and the Snowman” ever could.
The danger for those of us who grew up on the movies is that the trajectory will be reversed — that films that seemed meaningful to our teenage eyes aren’t really all that great when viewed outside the lens of indulgent childhood nostalgia. Yet revisiting one of McCarthy’s most popular films via a new 4K UHD release proves that some of the brat pack movies were not only always good, they’ve gotten even better with time. McCarthy and Ringwald’s coming of age romance “Pretty in Pink” is not just a terrific teen movie, it’s a terrific movie, period.
It was easy to take “Pretty in Pink” just a little bit for granted when it came out in 1986. It was the fourth teen flick written by John Hughes during the era when he was a kind of Preston Sturges for the young adult crowd; just as Sturges wrote and directed seven near-perfect comedies between 1940 and 1944, Hughes cranked out scripts for six high school classics in the three-year period bookended by “Sixteen Candles” and “Some Kind of Wonderful.”
“Pretty in Pink” is one of Hughes’ best, partly due to his decision to hand the directing reins over to Howard Deutch. Deutch made his feature debut with “Pink,” and it has the texture and passion of a film by a guy with a lot to prove; every location, from the working class home of heroine Andie (Ringwald) and the posh environs of love interest Blaine (McCarthy) to the funky record store where Andie works and the club where she and her best friend and secret admirer Duckie (Jon Cryer) hang out, is packed with expressive visual details – each piece of clothing and décor is carefully chosen and absolutely right.
While Hughes’ slick directorial style in movies like “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” offers plenty of its own satisfactions, “Pretty in Pink” feels more lived-in and authentic than his other films thanks to Deutch’s more naturalistic, spontaneous approach – the emotional moments hit harder and cut deeper in “Pink” and the Deutch-directed “Some Kind of Wonderful” than they do in the teen films Hughes directed himself.
Deutch takes the moments when Hughes accurately and painfully articulates the raw nerves of adolescence, and makes them even better with his uncanny instincts for taking the actors out of their comfort zones and showcasing their performances appropriately within the frame. (He’s particularly adept at knowing when to employ long lenses to isolate the characters in key moments of loneliness and anxiety.) Ringwald has never been better than in this, her farewell to John Hughes movies before moving on to more adult fare like “The Pick-Up Artist” and Godard’s “King Lear.”
If “Pretty in Pink” marked the end of something for Ringwald, it was the beginning of something for Deutch, who kicked off his career with an astonishingly assured debut (even if, in a witty and self-effacing interview on the 4K, he presents himself as more lucky than confident). Deutch got the job because he had cut Hughes’ trailer for “Sixteen Candles,” and his apprenticeship in the publicity world had also included collaborations with Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Warren Beatty, and other master directors.
Working with the top auteurs of their day week in and week out clearly made an impact on Deutch, who absorbed their lessons into his DNA and applied them elegantly to his modest film about a girl in love with a boy from the other side of the tracks. Although no movie is actually “effortless,” “Pretty in Pink” gives that impression because Deutch’s choices are all so absolutely correct (the fact that he was working with top-tier collaborators like cinematographer Taj Fujimoto, editor Richard Marks, and composer Michael Gore unquestionably helped).
Deutch went on to direct two more Hughes scripts (“Some Kind of Wonderful” and “The Great Outdoors”) as well as hundreds of hours of episodic television and a handful of sequels to movies he did not direct (a couple of them, like the underrated “Grumpier Old Men,” superior to their originals). “Pretty in Pink” remains special in his oeuvre, and in the careers of everyone involved — there’s something hard to replicate about its combination of simplicity and innocence with so much rich observational insight and filmmaking craft. McCarthy is right to have revised his opinion.
The “Pretty in Pink” 4K UHD is now available from Paramount Home Video.
