Let's Talk Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles

My original movie boyfriend (sigh) Jake Ryan

Jake Ryan.  Can you even say this dreamboat’s name without a wistful sigh?  I still recall watching Sixteen Candles in the theater, giggling with my girlfriends and then being lovelorn over (sigh) Jake Ryan and Samantha’s good fortune to land this hunk.  Surely this is exactly what would happen to all of us when we turned sixteen, no? 

Where art thou, Michael Schoeffling?

Jake was perfect.  He had it all.  Gorgeous, popular and he drove a Porsche.  He seriously could not get any better.  What I find so interesting upon rewatch as an adult is that we know next to nothing about him.  Yes, we know he’s good looking and we know his family is wealthy and he seems to be a nice guy.  He’s looking for a girl that he can have a real relationship with.  (An aside - - how many teen boys would aspire to this, much less admit it?)  All these things are exactly what a teenage girl swoons over.  But what does Jake do?  Is he an athlete?  Does he draw or write?  What are his hobbies?  These things are less than secondary to the overall story in Sixteen Candles, which is how terrible Samantha’s sixteenth birthday is with her family forgetting and focusing on her spoiled and vapid older sister’s wedding, her lack of waking to four more inches of bod and pining away over the seemingly unattainable dream guy Jake Ryan (sigh).

Out of all of John Hughes’ teenaged characters, Jake Ryan is possibly the least developed and fleshed out.  Granted, he is not a character we would find in the awesome ensemble of The Breakfast Club or even the charmingly credited “The Geek” but his lack of any real definition makes me wonder if this was a conscious choice of Hughes - - after all, teen girls crush on boys in their classes all the time merely based on looks and/or popularity - - or a side effect of Sixteen Candles being his first foray into filming a teenage girl’s angst.




Could you imagine him sitting behind you in class?

The true character of Jake Ryan is relatively irrelevant to the teenaged girls who flocked to the theater back in 1984 (myself among them), finding him, and his scorching good looks, to be the absolute ultimate.  I thought then and I’ll agree now that he’s a pretty darn good catch from what we know.  Only one thing chinks the Ryan armor and that’s this - - he placed his passed out drunk girlfriend into his father’s car with The Geek (who could not drive) and sent them off with a “Have fun!”  Harmless and funny back in 1984.  Today, watching it and seeing that the Prom Queen and The Geek supposedly had sex in a parking lot later that night, although neither of them truly remember it, is a bit unsettling.  Jake’s girlfriend Caroline is presented as a somewhat snobby party girl that he’s tired of (Jake’s friend points out that Caroline knows how to party serious) and it seems that we’re supposed to believe that she is such a spoilt nuisance that this is perfectly justifiable behavior. 

That said, Jake does stand up to his friend in defense of his burgeoning attraction to Samantha, a sophomore.  Definite points for that.  He is also extremely polite to Samantha’s grandparents, who answer her phone, when he attempts to call her (outside of saying “Eat me” when he thinks no one is answering, that is.)  He also retrieves her undies from The Geek to return to her. 

Perhaps most amazingly, the end of the film shows Jake and Samantha sitting in front of a birthday cake, lit with candles.  A birthday cake he got for her.   Everyone together . . . awwwwwww.    

Awful bridesmaids dress but hot guy