I bet you'll look at this for a second and go, "Um, did they remake The Breakfast Club, or .... what?" No, they did not remake the John Hughes cult classic, but they did remake the poster for the new documentary American Teen. One of the more popular films from the Sundance Film Festival, American Teen was quite often the subject of debate. People loved it, but couldn't understand how someone would market it. After all, how do you sell a documentary about teenagers to teenagers? Sure, it works on MTV ... but would it work on the big screen?

Obviously, Paramount Vantage is running with the quote most often heard amongst critics in Park City: "It's like The Breakfast Club, but a documentary." Even our own James Rocchi was in agreement when he opened up his Sundance review with, "Nanette Burstein's documentary American Teen opens not far from John Hughes country, both geographically and artistically: we're introduced, in quick order, to four students at the high school in Warsaw, Indiana, on the first day of class."

Is American Teen the next Breakfast Club? I guess we'll find out when it arrives in theaters on July 25. (Oh, and for fun we've included the original Breakfast Club poster after the jump.)

[via Film School Rejects]

Drillbit Taylor, a comedy about three youths who hire a "bodyguard" to protect them from school bullies, may be produced by Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), but it doesn't really fit into the Apatow filmography of manic modern comedies. It feels like it belongs to a different continuum of film -- the lazy-yet-agreeable teen comedies of the '80s, where a simple hook gets festooned and garlanded with bits of business and digressions. That's not surprising, considering that one of the credited writers is that '80s comedy titan of teen John Hughes, shielded behind a pseudonym. It's not wholly retro -- the off-kilter, lazy charm of Owen Wilson in the lead role feels too modern for that -- but it also feels like a film we've seen many times before in form and flavor, and while it may not be consistently brilliant or laugh-out-loud funny all the way through, it is at the least consistently amusing.

Wade (Nate Hartley) and Ryan (Troy Gentile) are just entering high school; they're eager to move to the next phase of their lives. Wade is slight, bespectacled and intrinsically decent; Ryan is a beefy, big-boned boy, funny and outgoing. (Comparisons to Michael Cera and Jonah Hill in Superbad are not undeserved; Superbad co-writer Seth Rogen is credited here alongside Kristofor Brown, working from a story by John Hughes -- here credited as, in a shout-out to English majors nationwide, Edmond Dantes.) They're both looking forward to the opportunities for social re-invention their new environment offers: Ryan tells Wade "I don't want you to call me Ryan; call me T-Dog." But when minuscule, nervy, nerdy classmate Emmit (David Dorfman) is being shoved into a locker, Wade does the ethically right but tactically wrong thing of speaking up, and thereby places himself and Ryan on the radar of snake-eyed sociopathic school bully Filkins (Alex Frost) and his partner-in-thuggery Ronnie (Josh Peck).

Growing up, my two favorite comedians were Steve Martin and John Candy. My favorite filmmaker was John Hughes. And yet I was never allowed to see the collaboration of my three heroes -- Planes, Trains and Automobiles, because it was Rated "R" and my parents are mean. When I finally broke my father down and was permitted to watch it, I treasured every moment. And I still do. Maybe it's the years of anticipation that made the film so special to me, but it easily ranks among my very favorite comedies of all time.

John Hughes was in the midst of an amazing hot streak in 1987. He had written the screenplays for hits like Mr. Mom, National Lampoon's Vacation, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful. His first four films as a writer/director had been Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, four of the most important films of my youth (and a lot of peoples' youths). Planes, Trains and Automobiles was a bit of a departure for Hughes -- an "adult" comedy, with nary a teenager in sight. Thankfully, Hughes knew the complicated world of adult relationships and feelings just as well as he did that of teens.

Martin plays Neal Page, an uptight advertising man who is trying to get from New York to Chicago in time for Thanksgiving. John Candy plays Del Griffith, a slobby shower curtain ring salesman who is headed the same direction as Neal. For better or worse, they wind up taking the trip together. Tale as old as time. But beautiful writing, pitch-perfect performances, and a surprisingly powerful undercurrent of emotion make Planes, Trains and Automobiles the buddy comedy by which all others must be judged.

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas! No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here! We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f**king Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a**holes this side of the nuthouse!

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

After European Vacation, no one had any reason to believe the Vacation series would get back on track. Not to mention, almost without exception, movie series tend to get worse as they go along, right? Well, not this time.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation ranks just slightly behind the original in terms of laughs, and it packs in even more heart without resorting to schmaltz. Again, I'm going to give a lot of the credit to John Hughes, the sole writer this time out. He makes just about every line funny, memorable, and quotable. He gives us a whole lot of characters, each well-defined and amusing. Hughes may have hit his peak here unfortunately, because after the following year's Home Alone, the man never wrote a great script again. (I think Dutch is hilarious, but even with all my Hughes love I can't call it "good.")

It was a "last hurrah" of sorts for Chevy Chase, too. Chase is really terrific here in what is, I'm sad to say, his final funny starring role (although I didn't see The Karate Dog). Oh, Chevy. What happened? Beverly D'Angelo returns, and is typically great ("Clark! Slow down! I don't want to spend the holidays dead!"). And my Lord, does Randy Quaid step it up here as Cousin Eddie. Chase's exchanges with Quaid are some of the film's funniest moments ("Can I refill your eggnog for you? Get you something to eat? Drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you for dead?"). If Quaid's delivery of gems like "Merry Christmas! Sh*tter was full!" and "That's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!" don't make you laugh, well ... lighten up.

The hills are alive with the sound of Griswold! This s**t's been around for a very long time!

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

I'm reviewing all the films in the Vacation series over the next couple weeks, and in preparation I've been re-watching each of the movies. I thought I'd be able to save myself some time and skip National Lampoon's European Vacation, as I just saw it again a couple of months ago. Then I took a seat at the computer and realized I couldn't remember a damn thing about the film. I saw it a few times growing up, I saw it very recently, and yet nothing was sticking out in my mind. European Vacation is that kind of movie -- not terrible necessarily, just instantly and powerfully forgettable.

The movie would seem to have everything going for it. Sure, Harold Ramis was out as director, but was replaced by the great Amy Heckerling (whom I recently saw at an Elvis Costello concert, which earns her unlimited cool points even without the movie career). Heckerling was hot off the excellent Fast Times as Ridgemont High and the cult favorite Johnny Dangerously, and seemed a perfect fit for the material. John Hughes returned to flesh out the story and co-write the script. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo were reprising their classic roles.

So why is European Vacation so completely underwhelming? I intended to start each Vacation entry with a memorable line from the film, and it took me forever to pick a decent one for European. Where is Hughes' sparkling, endlessly quotable dialogue?

John Hughes is a major hero of mine. I can't overstate the impact his movies had on me growing up, and he is a major influence on and inspiration to me now. As I mentioned in my National Lampoon's Vacation post today, there simply wasn't a better writer of film comedy in the 1980s. As far as his "teenager movies" go, 1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off might just be his masterpiece. So it is with much apprehension that I report the following news -- there may be a sequel on the way. A completed script is being shopped around Hollywood, and Steve Spears at Stuck in the 80s has read it. So why am I not more excited? The reclusive Mr. Hughes had nothing to do with it. It was written by an Arizona-based screenwriter named Rick Rapier.

Titled Ferris Bueller 2: Another Day Off, the proposed sequel takes place on the eve of Bueller's fortieth birthday. Spears, a major Hughes enthusiast, calls Rapier's script "a blast. I read it in a single afternoon and was impressed with the care Rapier took with the original story and characters. The story has the same feel, humor and pace as the 1986 movie, which should please hard-core Ferris fans." The storyline finds Ferris 20 years older and living off a hugely successful self-help career, a la Tony Robbins. His best friend Cameron (played in '86 by Alan Ruck) manages the business. Turning 40 shakes Ferris up, and he decides to take the day off, "sending Cameron, his business associates and family into a frenzy." In addition to Ferris and Cameron, most of the supporting characters are in the script. Sloane Peterson (played in '86 by Mia Sara) is now "a Hollywood star going through a rough marriage." Ferris' sister Jeannie (Jennifer Grey) is now married to the guy from the police station (Charlie Sheen). Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) doesn't work for the school anymore, but has devoted his life to getting revenge on Ferris (What's he going to do at this point, murder him?). Even Ben Stein's character is in there, now working at an airline.

Rapier wants all the original actors to return, and he wants John Hughes to direct. I think the odds of that happening are mighty slim. For starters, Hughes has never directed a script he didn't write, and I strongly doubt he'd start by helming some random dude's take on one of his most beloved characters. In addition, Hughes hasn't directed a film since 1991's Curly Sue (the only bad film the man directed). Nobody wants Hughes to return more than me, but if a Bueller sequel was to be his comeback film, wouldn't he write it himself? I've been hearing rumors of a Ferris sequel for years (along with talk of sequels for Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink...), and I had always heard Matthew Broderick was down for it -- if Hughes wrote and directed. So where does that leave Rapier's script? I sure hope we're not going to see some direct-to-video craptacular with Charlie Schlatter being pursued by Richard Riehle. Anybody remember this?

Note: Summer is coming to a close, and I don't have the budget to do much traveling. So I decided to take some Vacation time with the Griswolds instead. All this week and next, I'll be reviewing the Vacation movies, one of the most loved (and uneven) comedy franchises in modern film.

I think you're all f**ked in the head. We're ten hours from the f**king fun park and you want to bail out? Well I'll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun. I'm gonna have fun and you're gonna have fun. We're all gonna have so much f**king fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our goddamn smiles! You'll be whistling 'Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah' out of you're a**holes! I gotta be crazy! I'm on a pilgrimage to see a moose. Praise Marty Moose! Holy S**t!

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

Clark Griswold is my father circa 1988. The glasses. The Izod shirt. The too-short shorts. The unrelenting and misguided enthusiasm for all things family. The barely concealed rage. It's all there. What makes National Lampoon's Vacation work so well, all these years later, is that everyone thinks Clark is based on his or her father. Some of the funniest comedy comes from recognition, and this movie is almost like watching home movies from my youth. Except for the dead aunt on the roof of the car, but we'll get to that in a moment.

They assembled a real dream team for this movie, three giants of comedy at their primes. Behind the camera, you've got Harold Ramis, fresh off his directorial debut (Caddyshack -- not a bad start!). He clearly came to play here, and I'd imagine he had something to do with keeping Chevy Chase's tendency to overact in check. The script was written and based on a short story (click here to read it!) by John Hughes, unquestionably the finest film comedy writer of the 1980s. Disagree with me? Take a look at this list of Hughes scripts produced from 1983 to 1990: Mr. Mom, Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Planes Trains and Automobiles, She's Having A Baby, Uncle Buck, Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone. The man was a god.

No doubt some will say this ranks up there with Lost Boys 2 in the bad-idea-based-on an-80s-film-department, but I'm keeping an open mind. Word from Moviehole is that there are plans afoot to remake Weird Science, that ode to adolescent hormones and computer geekery directed by John Hughes. The remake will be penned by Johnny Rosenthal (who is also attached to a proposed feature version of the criminally underrated Arrested Development series) for Universal. The original film, of course, starred Kelly LeBrock as the perfect woman created on the computer of two socially challenged teenage boys played by Ian Mitchell-Smith and 80s uber-geek Anthony Michael Hall.

Maybe it's because I didn't see the movie until years after its release, but I never thought this was Hughes' best work, and I think the concept could stand a 're-imagining.' I've long thought that rather than classic films, movies that didn't work perfectly the first time around should be the subject of remakes, and I think Weird Science qualifies. Even if the original was not a masterpiece, it has certainly left its mark. The theme song by Oingo Boingo has gone on to be pretty well known in its own right, and the film was adapted into a TV series which debuted in 1994 on the USA Network and ran for 88 episodes, with Vanessa Angel in the Kelly LeBrock role. Casting the new object of computer-generated perfection will obviously be the big challenge.

If you grew up in the 80's then the chances are pretty good that you've seen a lot of John Hughes movies. Hughes' schedule was packed back then when he directed his teen masterpieces Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Hughes still works as a writer, but hasn't directed a film since 1991 (Curly Sue).

Don't You Forget About Me, a new documentary by Matt Austin, interviews fans of the films and people who worked with the now somewhat reclusive director on those famous angst-filled flicks. Austin has interviews with Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Kelly LeBrock, and even Kevin Smith, whose love of Hughes is pretty well documented. Hughes hasn't given an interview since the 80's, but Austin is still trying to get one with him before finishing the film; it's still up in the air. Austin has compiled a tape to send to Hughes in an attempt to convince him to take part, and seems confident: "Right now, I'm very hopeful that we're going to get him. My genuine feeling is we'll get a call."

Maybe when it comes down to it, since I'm not a teen anymore, I don't get most teen movies lately. Don't You Forget About Me credits Hughes with creating some of the most realistic portrayals of how teens really behave. I don't know if that's true, but I do know he managed to make teen movies that had more to offer than sex with baked goods.

There's no doubt about it -- I am a huge Paul Feig fan. Most people have no idea who the man is, but if you're at all familiar with Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Arrested Development and Undeclared, then you're familiar with his work. For those of you who dig awkward childhood stories, I will also suggest reading Feig's book Kick Me -- simply hilarious stuff right there. Recently, Feig left the world of television to get his feet wet directing feature films -- his second, Unaccompanied Minors, is due out December 8.

Well, Warner Bros. is so happy with Minors, they've just signed Feig to do another film for the studio, one he will re-write and eventually direct. It's called Smooth Operator, and Feig describes it as "a high-tech version of Cyrano ... or like a Hitch-meets-Rush Hour." Story revolves around a pimped out CIA agent who's placed in charge of training a computer nerd on how to seduce a female operative. As you can imagine, the nerd needs a little bit of help in that area. And who better to tackle nerds than Paul Feig.

One of the things Feig intends to do with the script is beef up the physical comedy, something he's not so accustomed to -- obviously, from looking at his prior work, the man is more about character and less about pies to the face. It will also be the first time Feig adds a bit of action to his repertoire. However, he goes on to say, "I am first and foremost into character writing but the last few years I've wanted to try to bring back stuff I used to watch, movies from John Hughes, Blake Edwards, and stuff like the Three Stooges." It should be interesting to see if he succeeds ... I know my fingers are crossed.

It's time for another round of Film Blog Group Hug, where we uncover all kinds of hidden goodies written by film bloggers all around the Web:

• The Lana Turner Blog-a-Thon took place last week. You can read a number of bloggers' thoughts on the actress and her film career, not to mention viewing some striking photos.
• Film Freak discusses the films of John Hughes during the writer-director's Eighties teen-movie heyday. I would disagree with the statement that "John Hughes was the Quentin Tarantino of his day," but I was never a big fan of his films, beyond a very slight, guilty fondness for Sixteen Candles. (I think I identified too much with the older sister in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.)
• Peter at Alarm! shares his reaction to Jean-Luc Godard's film Band of Outsiders. He's nearly convinced me to see it myself, even though I normally have trouble watching Godard's movies.
• The House Next Door reminds those lucky New Yorkers about Film Forum's "Essential Wilder" series this month. The Cinecultist has already attended one of the screenings, A Foreign Affair. I love living in Austin, but did a single theater in town do anything to note Billy Wilder's 100th birthday? Nope. Boo.