Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Imaginative student Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) pretends to be ill so that he can skip high school. He spends the day with his best friend and girlfriend instead, despite his sister (Jennifer Grey) and the Dean of Students (Jeffrey Jones) catching onto his elaborate range of tricks and deceptions to make them believe he’s still at home in bed. 

This is the best of the John Hughes teen films, probably because it’s much funnier than the others. But I find it fascinating that even his comedy film has to have some serious “self-discovery” drama. This is played out as Ferris’s best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) learns to face up to his fears after trashing his father’s sports car. 

The fourth-wall device works well – especially since it’s only Ferris, the narrator, who talks to camera. 

The music is prominent, as always. You get songs by Yello, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Big Audio Dynamite. There’s also an especially memorable sequence in which Bueller mines "Twist and Shout" by The Beatles from a carnival float. 

Like all Hughes’ films, adults are represented as one-dimensional authority figures to be scorned. And like The Breakfast Club, it mourns the passing of youth as the kids simultaneously want to join the adult world yet view that world with mistrust and contempt.

Dirty Dancing (1987)

I had never seen this before. Almost a third of a century after its release I spent £1 to find out what all the fuss was about. Nineteen eighty-seven is the year of 1980s films. This film is so 1980s that it simply cannot convince you it is set in 1963. Not only does the music lurch between the decades, but also the fashions. Patrick Swayze acts with his sweaty muscles (he’s topless for much of the film), while Jennifer Grey is charming as the wide-eyed daddy’s girl who learns how to dance – and live her life.

Thematically, there’s plenty going on: a thread about class prejudice, the young vs. old generational divide and the sense of a new, more liberated world about to arrive. One flaw is the way that – as per the style of the times – it breaks down into a pop video at certain points, including the narrative climax when you get the big hit ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’ by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes.

Curiously, the mother of the family is almost entirely absent from the narrative. She barely gets to speak. Only the father’s opinion matters regarding their daughter’s behaviour. I hope this was the filmmakers making a point about sexism rather than forgetting to develop an integral character. That said, there’s plenty to enjoy – the period detail of a simpler time, the soundtrack (when it stays in the correct era) and the warm evocation of a long-gone American innocence at a Catskills resort.