Is anyone shocked that Molly Ringwald is apparently begging John Hughes for a sequel to 16 Candles? Well of fucking course she is. She’s not a total brain stem, I guess. Ringwald made her name in the 1984 adolescent romantic comedy, the first of a string of successful collaborations with Hughes. Now 40, she’s rarely had occasion to appear in anything either memorable or of lasting value to anyone outside her family since the 1980s (I’ll grant a waiver for 1994’s The Stand), and her big 1996 small screen comeback, Townies, flamed out after half a season if I recall correctly.

But sometimes things happen for a reason; I caught Ringwald on stage a number of years back, and she was flat-out awful… like, Ozarks dinner theater bad. Yeah, different muscles, I know, but Ringwald couldn’t even summon the meager skill and energy to charm thirtysomething the audience members who were most doggedly in her corner to begin with. She mainly just… talked quite loudly. For this reason and many others, if Hughes were to finally cede to decades-long pressure to return to some of his ’80s hitmakers, 16 Candles sure wouldn’t be the film to launch that trip down nostalgia lane. Maybe, maybe, maybe it’d be The Breakfast Club, but I still think Ferris Bueller’s Day Off would be the best candidate.