Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)
Directed by Howard Deutch
Keith Nelson, an artsy high school outcast, tries to land a date with popular girl Amanda Jones with some help from his tomboy best friend, Watts. However, Watts realizes she likes Keith as more than just a friend and tries to convince him to stop pursuing Amanda. Matters are further complicated when Keith's invitation draws the ire of Amanda's rich yet snobby ex-boyfriend, Hardy Jenns, who makes plans to get even.
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What critics compared Some Kind of Wonderful to
Director Levan Akin talks to us about the real dangers they faced making this movie, the films universal themes, how he is inspired by 80’s director John Hughes and ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful ‘ and the many messages Akin has received from the LGBTQ+ community -many from countries where it is dangerous just be yourself.
The plot sounds an awful lot like She’s All That, Can’t Buy Me Love, 10 Things I Hate About You, Mean Girls, or even Some Kind of Wonderful, and it would be easy to dismiss sight unseen The DUFF as a copycat/rip-off of high school coming-of-age films from decades past.
Too bad, it never figures out its own identity, playing dumpy gatekeeper to the likes of Some Kind of Wonderful and She’s All That .
It should come as no surprise that things take a turn towards She's All That or Some Kind of Wonderful by having Wesley teach Bianca how not to be perceived as the DUFF, and hopefully win the heart of soulful guitarist Taylor (Nick Eversman).
And, if the film owes its everything to "Sixteen Candles," "Some Kind of Wonderful," "Can't Buy Me Love," "She's All That," "10 Things I Hate About You," and " Mean Girls " (just to name a few), at least its story stays true to its irrepressible heroine without feeling the need to change her.
After the John Hughes melodies of Homecoming were such a success, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers and director Jon Watts have continued the motif but aimed a little more angsty with echoes of Some Kind of Wonderful and Sixteen Candles fluttering in the background whilst still maintaining the Ferris Bueller frivolity with some superb gags.
Though when Sierra heads into the kitchen for breakfast, her upbeat, ego-boosting parents (Hughes alums Alan Ruck of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and Lea Thompson of “Some Kind of Wonderful”) ask if she remembered to “leave her insecurities in the bathroom mirror.”
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And so he strays, jumping into bed with a curvaceous yoga instructor ( Scarlett Johansson ), who's caught up in her own Some Kind of Wonderful conundrum.
Furthermore, any motion picture that can use 1987's "Some Kind of Wonderful" as a story point and sell it wholesale is clearly after my own affections.
Suddenly, she realizes that Hughes' 1987 opus Some Kind of Wonderful (always underrated in my book) can explain, you know, everything.
Where would we be without his classics such as The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pretty In Pink and Some Kind Of Wonderful?
These scenes try a little too hard to be charming but they are anyway, and if Deutch has the freckles and immediacy of a classic Brat Pack heroine, it may be because her mother is Lea Thompson of “Back to the Future” and “Some Kind of Wonderful” and her father is Howard Deutch, who directed the latter.
For a raunchy R-rated comedy, Gormican's debut is surprisingly sophisticated at times, and he even manages to achieve a certain level of John Hughes circa "Some Kind of Wonderful" by the end.
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The getting-to-know-you stuff between Carl and Allison, though, is where the film really takes off, and they share a number of swoon-worthy set-pieces, one set after-hours at the Hollywood Bowl (echoes of 1987's "Some Kind of Wonderful" are unavoidable) and another where they decide to fly somewhere on the spur of the moment and end up in Lincoln, Nebraska.
"Whatever It Takes," loosely based on "Cyrano de Bergerac," is a flawed movie in more ways than one, and it makes you long for the '80s John Hughes era, when teen movies like "Sixteen Candles," "Pretty in Pink," and "Some Kind of Wonderful" laid the groundwork for such '90s fare as this, but were done with a great deal more intelligence and overall heart.