Can I be a total girl here for a moment?

I watched The Breakfast Club and Say Anything... this weekend, so I'm like brimming with wistful, doe-eyed romanticism that only John Hughes-ish movies are capable of inducing. It's funny that these movies are so sacred to me, when, upon repeat viewings I can see how shallow some of the dialogue is or where performances were lacking (the chick from Say Anything... can't compete against the tour-de-force of emotionally wounded John Cusack), but I can't stop loving them.

Last time I watched The Breakfast Club, I got distracted trying to figure out if Ally Sheedy's makeover in the movie was a move to curb her self-expression (the verdict: probably not). This time, I got distracted by Judd Nelson. ( You heard me. )

I think linaerys or maybe it was deepredbelle (help me out: which of you was it?) linked to a Say Anything... fanfic about those characters down the road, and I immediately wanted one for Bender as soon as the movie was over, fading away from him pumping his fist. I then immediately did not. There was a plan, once to do such a thing, to catch up with these characters (I think there was even a deleted bit where the janitor was going to mention what happened to all of them later, Can't Hardly Wait-style), but the bittersweet wonderfulness of The Breakfast Club was the idea of the moment being all they had. Brian asks--"Are we still friends on Monday?"--and the answer Claire gives is probably what is true: no, they aren't. Do you want to know that, though? Do you want to imagine Claire said "Hi," to Brian and then didn't immediately dismiss him to her friends (just as she said Bender would do to her)? There's a duality that is this movie's enduring strength in that you know or can least reasonably assume that the day will have changed the people but not the system, and that you can predict what will have changed (the answer is nothing); however, you never stop hoping that maybe the impossible will be reality and civilized behavior will come to a bunch of high schoolers (I know, right?). It feels wrong to set down an idea of the future for these characters because the future will never be as important as the potential.

Say Anything..., on the other hand, is all about the future. ( I mean, it starts out with a graduation, for crying out loud. )

Oh, I buy it. I am such a girl for that movie. John Cusack does good things and so-so things, and I've loved things he's done after this to pieces (favorite besides this one would have to be Grosse Pointe Blank, though Better Off Dead is so quote-worthy, it's up there, too), but this is the only movie of his that reduces me to a sighing, dreamy mess. Le siiiiiiigh....