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Show Sex comedy is low point of the week event is when a boy closes a door on his drunken girl and her golden tresses are stuck in the door jamb! The story has plenty of rowdy moments, mostly supplied by characters who are spinning in their own crazy orbits. There's a Chinese exchange student who goes off on a drunken spree as soon as he slips the leash from his American "hosts." The Geek (mar-velously (mar-velously done by Anthony Michael Hall) is a scrawny, unquenchably optimistic make-out man. At first, it looks like he's set up to be Molly's boyfriend, but he only dallies at being matchmaker match-maker for her, and goes off on his own sexual adventures adven-tures including having the blonde beauty dumped in his lap. He's the privileged character who stares right into the camera and says, "This is getting good." Despite some raunchiness, "Sixteen Candles" lives up to that spirit. f A Classic Recommended Good double-feature double-feature material Time-killer For niasochists V "'v J l2 Hardbodies "Hardbodies" excels in contriving scenes where ac-actresses ac-actresses remove their T-shirts. T-shirts. This is the chief talent required from the women. The men have nothing exciting ex-citing to show, and even less to offer in comedic timing. The plot supposes that three middle-aged men (a stud with mileage, a fatty and a Texas boy) hit the beaches for a last fling. But they're rebuffed by the beach bunnies who tell them, "We don't fossils for free." The local "operator" (Grant Cramer) teaches them how to attract girls with the BBD (Bigger and Better Deal) method, or what he calls "dialoguing women." (They won't just fall for any old line. Now you have to use a paragraph. ) From there, the plot throws in the usual pratfalls in the hot tub; subplots about a lady rock band and female body builders; a wierd character who can "flip off" people in 45 languages; and other tasteful bits ( like the guy in a wheelchair yanked by his fishing line off a pier). The script also makes a dumb switch halfway through, where the aging stud suddenly sud-denly becomes a bad guy and tries to steal the hero's girl. "Hardbodies" should be noted for its ad campaign that is five times better than the movie. By itself, it is yet another of those beach sex comedies that could curdle the hormones of a satyr. Purple Hearts Even with a Vietnam setting, set-ting, "Purple Hearts" has no bite. It's strictly programmed. program-med. Navy doctor Ken Wahl meets nurse Cheryl Ladd, they exchange repartee. (Ladd: "I never would have taken you for a bowel man.") And they fall in love while glaring at each other's emotional blocks. He's a drafted young professional trying not to feel the death around him. She's shy about committing to a love affair. In between (increasingly steamy) encounters, Wahl runs off to the battlefield. The tempo here alternates the romance with the shooting kiss, bang, kiss, bang just like the old war movies. But since this is Vietnam, all the military adventures are futile. One episode is based on the true incident where U.S. soldiers raided a North Vietnamese POW camp, and found it empty! It becomes hard to take the picture seriously as in the scene where Ladd sniffles snif-fles that her last love died when he took on a special mission, and Wahl's eyes flash "uh, oh!" we know he's just signed up for the same deal ! "Purple Hearts" is bearable, because Sidney Furie's direction is well-paced. well-paced. Ladd is lightly sensual. sen-sual. Wahl is a palatable blank, except for one nice crack-up scene, he never shows his hero breaking through the emotional insulation. in-sulation. There's a good batch of well-written supporting support-ing roles, especially Steven Lee as Wahl's buddy and Lee Ermey as a garrulous sergeant. ser-geant. The picture is junky, though. It's domesticated the Vietnam War to fit a pulp romance. Sixteen Candles "Sixteen Candles" has boozers, wild parties and bathroom humor. But it's not quite the same as the usual "Animal House" movie, even though writer-director John Hughes has done that kind of picture. Beneath all the chaos, the calm undercurrent under-current of the main plot is about the sublime agony of the first romantic connection. connec-tion. Molly Ringwald shows a mopey charm as a girl who is crushed to find, on her 16th birthday, that her family has forgotten about the whole thing. They're too busy preparing to marry her older sister off to an ethnic husband (they keep calling their in-laws "the Rice-cheks"). Rice-cheks"). And she is already depressed by the firm belief that she will never be able to interest the handsome guy in class. Actually, Handsome is interested and is squirming uneasily in the embrace of an empty-headed girlfriend. The picture doesn't throw them into bed. The story is about their long journey to the first kiss. Filmmaker Hughes takes time to appreciate ap-preciate the little agonies of middle-class life like how creepy your grandparents look to you when you're sixteen. six-teen. And in his big party scene, the major comic |