Let's face it, guys. I LOVE Molly Ringwald. She is my muse. However, if you think about it, all of the movies in which she is the protagonist have the exact same structure: Molly wakes up and does something in the morning. She goes to her workplace/school, where we are introduced to the love interest, The Jake, as well as her nemesis, Douche McDick. Molly's world revolves around Jake, and she will do anything to be with him. Douche McDick is an associate of The Jake, and will do anything to prevent Molly from getting him. Molly and the Jake confront each other for what seems like the first time, and she gets ecstatic. Is her dream coming true? They get to know each other better, and their relationship blossoms. All seems lost when Douche McDick breaks Molly's heart, but with the help of The Jake (and possibly The Dad), she snaps out of her Heroic BSOD and royally owns Douche. Her life crisis over, she confesses her love for the Jake, clears up any subplots, freeze frame and roll credits. Now, let's experiment. What if it was in a different genre, other than a teen romance or drama? How about a thriller? Suppose that Molly wakes up in the morning after a recurring nightmare, perhaps stemming from a trauma in her past or her own desperation. She meanders through her day in a state of depression and existential numbness. She bumps into the Jake, who she has a love-hate relationship with. She is ambivalent, a woman divided. Then Douche McDick comes along, this time in the form of Abraham Lecture. He is soft-spoken, aloof, and yet incredibly charming. He is well-read, well-bred, and has great gourmet taste. Molly falls under Abraham's spell, and starts living on the edge for a change. Her relationship with The Jake blossoms, but the darkness is still there. All seems lost when a well-placed lecture from Lecture causes Molly to slip into near-catatonic depression. With the help of The Jake, Molly gets out of it, figures out Abraham's plot and a chase ensues, because every teen thriller needs a chase scene. Abraham is foiled or killed, the recurring dream goes away, and Molly is a happier person. She confesses her love for The Jake. Freeze frame. Roll credits. How do you like Molly now?
I just came to say that Pretty In Pink is one of my favourite movies, and I don't go for chick flicks.
Sometimes, I think Molly had too sensible a persona to make a believable heroine in a thriller. You just naturally believed that when someone as slick and shady as Steff approached her, she would just call him on his b*llsh*t. The same thing happened in The Pick-Up Artist. She totally owned each relationship she was in. Hey , have you ever seen Spacehunter adventures in the forbidden zone? She kindof lived on the edge in that! She was a starving waif that hadn't taken a bath in ages. Even her love interest told her to keep downwind. ha! And then there was this other creep who had his eye on her, a robotic spider of a man played by Michael Ironside, whose idea of flirting is to put his ladies through a deadly obstacale couse, which has Molly trying to run over a floor of flames and escape some churning spiked lawnroller. Of course it wasn't a typical Molly movie.
^This. Does BC really fit this formula? The 'Jake' Character isn't really consistent with this. Neither is the Douche, to be honest.
