The film behaves as if it's dealing in soul-baring insights and emotional deepening. But it's only dealing in plastic. It's rare to encounter such unfailing falseness in a movie that seems to have been launched with benign intentions.

I suspect all these kids are going somewhere, and Hughes, of course, is already there.

Hughes is clearly of the impression that he knows a lot about kids and the way they think. He is, for the most part, mistaken... Yet this is a movie well worth seeing, if only for the performances, which are without exception excellent.

Regardless of what generation you were born into, if you’re a teenager, you can find something relatable in the five teenage characters in Hughes’s film, which speaks to the film’s lasting legacy and its authenticity.