Dutch

I've hammered away on Xmastime for a while now about the John Hughes run of Planes, Trains & Automobiles/The Great Outdoors/Uncle Buck/Christmas Vacation/Career Opportunities/Dutch being somewhat ignored since it's not the Sixteen Candles/Weird Science/Breakfast Club/Pretty in Pink/Ferris Bueller/Some Kind of Wonderful run (to say nothing about his having written Mr. Mom and Vacation before them.) So it's nice to see Tinsel & Rot look at Career Opportunities in his Soundtracks Have I Loved series (not only does T&R get credit for also loving the later Hughes canon, but for remembering the episode of SBTB when Zack's falls for some girl living in the mall because her dad lives in a cave, but of course Zack hooks the guy up with a job JUUUUST before Christmas by having his dad, who has seen Zack for about 11 minutes his entire life, inexplicably give the guy some middle-management position in his company that nobody really knows what it does.)

T&R is extremely thorough on his critique of the CO soundtrack, so I feel bad since what with T&R suggesting I be the go-to guy for the Dutch soundtrack, to be honest I find that even while watching it at this moment, I can't say the music in the film has any real impact at all. Perhaps the movie from Hughes that LEAST leans on music, it's also perhaps not so coincidentally more American than Hughes' typical British new wave stuff. I mean, the one music bit you remember is Ed O'Neill singing I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, so. Maybe Hughes wanted any music to subtly reflect Dutch's working class American-ness? Hell, even Planes, Trains and Automobiles had it's musical moments. giving us Bill Monroe, The Flintstones theme song and, maybe showing my "when Hughes wants to lay it on thick he uses new wave-sounding British stuff" thesis to hold true, Red River Rock.


Hey, whaddya know, the John Hughes Film Festival is tomorrow (Sunday.)