Remembering ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful,’ John Hughes’ Final Teen Masterpiece

What’s sometimes lost in the discussion of John Hughes‘ extraordinary reinvention of the teen film is just how brief his time in the subgenre was. Beginning with the release of Sixteen Candles in 1984, Hughes began a writing and directing streak that remains tough to top in any genre. By 1986 he had produced four of the most celebrated teen films ever made – Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – while also managing to deliver Weird Science (less celebrated and less timeless than the others, but still fun) and the sequel European Vacation. It’s the kind of creative potency and legacy building that storytellers dream about, and he did it in a flash.

By 1987 Hughes was already moving beyond teen films into other masterpieces like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, but he still had one last story to tell in the genre. Some Kind of Wonderful is perhaps the least-watched of all of Hughes’ teen comedies. While the others, even Weird Science, have found their way to prominence on basic cable, his final statement on the genre has often gone overlooked. That’s a shame, one that Hughes fans should rectify now that the film is available to stream, because Some Kind of Wonderful plays in many ways like the most refined version of everything Hughes has to say about being a teenager. It is, if you will, his high school graduation speech.

Written by Hughes and directed by his Pretty In Pink collaborator Howard Deutch, the film structurally resembles Pretty In Pink in many respects, in that it’s also about a group of teenagers from varied social classes wrapped up in a love triangle. Keith (Eric Stoltz) is a kid from the wrong side of the tracks (literally!) and has the hots for Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson), the most popular girl in school and the kind of girl the film’s soundtrack proves people write songs about. Amanda is, of course, dating a rich guy with a cool car and a bad attitude (Craig Sheffer) and barely looks at Keith twice, until he happens to ask her out just as her boyfriend is being a particularly aggressive brand of jerk. As Keith, over the moon that he actually has a shot with Amanda, prepares for his big date, everyone around him tries to insulate him against heartbreak, or worse. The loudest voice in that chorus is Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson), Keith’s tomboy best friend who moves to the beat of her own drum (again, literally; she’s a drummer) and doesn’t care if she’s mocked for her looks or the boy’s underwear she sports in the girls locker room. Watts wants to keep her best friend safe, but she also wants him to be happy, as she proves when she offers to give him kissing lessons before he has to try out his skills on Amanda. As you probably guessed by now, she’s also deeply in love with him.

So yes, the Pretty In Pink structure is there, gender-flipped and dripping with the same kind of emotional tension, so you might be wondering what the point of Some Kind of Wonderful is. What sets the film apart, from Pink and from the rest of the Hughes teen canon, is an emphasis on life beyond high school.

Keith isn’t just a poor kid, but a poor kid who wants to be an artist, though his father is constantly nagging him about becoming a first generation college graduate while also implying that he can’t make his own choices. Amanda isn’t just a popular girl, but a young woman who’s becoming increasingly aware of the limits her high school social life has, and the potential for personal growth that emerges as the shallow façade of her “friendships” begins to crumble. Watts isn’t just the tomboy best friend. She’s someone who’s learned through often painful trial and error how to really be herself, and now she’s struggling to open her heart, her real heart, to someone else.

In the film’s most stirring emotional moment, Keith demands of his father “When does my life belong to me?!” The Hughes teen film aesthetic is often centered on kids trying to exert even the smallest measure of control over their own lives in a world that tells them to sit down and shut up. It’s easiest to read in The Breakfast Club, but it’s there in all of the films. You see it in Sixteen Candles as Samantha is pulled along in the unstoppable machine of her own family while just trying to find the love she feels she deserves. You see it in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as Cameron tries to break free of the emotional prison his parents have built for him. You see it in Pretty In Pink when Andie emerges at the prom in the dress she made herself.

In Some Kind of Wonderful this longing for control extends beyond the fenced-in boundaries of high school and into what comes next, as each of the characters recognize they’re after something deeper than what high school can give them. It even takes physical form in a pair of earrings that Keith buys with his college fund money. He calls them his “future,” a tactile embodiment of the leap he’s taking in putting his trust and love in another person. It may not last and it may not be a good decision, but it’s his, and it’s finally something that he can carry beyond high school. In that sense, Some Kind of Wonderful feels like Hughes’ attempt at finally letting his teen years go as he looked to the horizon for other things. That makes it a poignant sendoff to one of the great eras of creativity in 1980s cinema.

Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire whose work has appeared at Syfy Wire, Mental Floss, Looper, Playboy, and Uproxx, among others. He lives in Austin, Texas, and he’s always counting the days until Christmas. Find him on Twitter: @awalrusdarkly.

Where to stream Some Kind Of Wonderful