The characters way of communicating is great, John Hughes' isn't.

Rating: 5/10 (19 April 2020)

In this short-lived adolescence drama, five supposed High School archetypes grow together and demonstrate the viewer a great amount of concepts, which are dealt with in language theory. For example Paul Watzlawick's five axioms of communication. The first one "You can't not communicate" illustrated by the introverted Allison's mostly non-verbal way of gaining just as successfully attention, as loud mouth rebel John Bender does, who relies more on what he is saying. Watzlawick's fifth axiom "there is complementary and symmetric communication" is portrayed by nerd Brian's shy and complementary way of approaching spoiled Claire, since she is of higher status at the school, which results in her communicating symmetric with the athletic Andrew. Combined Friedemann Schulz von Thun's "four-sides model" which evolved out of Watzlawick's axioms, saying there is 1. Factual information 2. Self-revelation. 3. Relationship 4. Appeal in every sentence or statement, the dialogue heavy movie has a nice tool-box to work with. Somehow John Hughes found a way to still screw it up, by giving the characters the most cliché 80's Hollywood treatment possible. When a fragile character like Brian breaks apart emotionally, talking about his suicidal thoughts, Hughes is quick to grab the broom and brush it away, to make room for a rushed and expected "all drama aside, let's just all be friends" synapsis. Director John Hughes is clearly the bad communicator in this movie, speaking to the audience in a pleasant but hollow tone.