To confess something wicked, I'm actually kind of on the fence about Molly Ringwald as an actress. There was a time back in the eighties when she was a hot property, and was on her way to the big leagues before failed attempts to broaden appeal to audiences after her breakaway from director John Hughes sank any chance of that occurring. After that, Ringwald started appearing in really, reallllly low quality fare, mostly television movies and direct to video releases. In recen...t years, she appears to have been slowly resurfacing from the abyss. Whether or not that's a good thing is a point of contention. Of the three John Hughes films she did, only one, The Breakfast Club, can truly be considered great, and even then, she was being backed up by other actors. Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink are good, but looking back at them now, they're definitely more flash than substance. In high school, when I mentioned that I was a Ringwald fan, I was the butt of much derisive laughter. It's as if Ringwald has significantly devolved in stature from an up-and-coming talent to a punchline about everything wrong with 1980s actresses, and a shadow of her former self.
Why did I look that up? A gif, no less.
