Curly Sue: the end of the John Hughes era

Carley Tauchert

Carley's look back at the work of John Hughes comes to an end with, er, his 'least memorable' film...

Published on Jul 2, 2009

The early 90s were actually a great time for movies, and 1991 was no exception. Arnie ruled with Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Disney was introducing the world to Beauty And The Beast. But for every Hook (which I stand by as one of the greatest kids movies ever) there was a Curly Sue.

Starring Alisan Porter as the title character, Curly Sue is an orphan who is also homeless. She is under the care of her guardian Bill Dancer (James Belushi), and the two make their way through life by scamming innocent people. Not for profit, mind you, but just so they can get enough to eat.

While out scamming, they come across divorce lawyer Grey (Kelly Lynch) and fake that she'd hit Bill with her car. To make up for the ‘accident', she takes them to dinner only to be pulled away by her stereotypical horrible boyfriend Walker (John Getz). Thinking their scam is done and dusted, the two get on with their lives, until the next morning when Grey actually, er, does hit Bill with her car.

Guiltier than before, Grey takes the two home with her, and much to the objections of Walker, lets them stay. As a hard-nosed divorce lawyer, Grey soon finds herself being able to connect to her feelings and bonds quickly with the little girl. Yep, she finds herself falling in love with Bill. As they start to form the perfect little family, Walker decides it is time to put a call in to the social services.

Desperate for Curly Sue to have a real home he is willing to give her up for the greater good, but this being a John Hughes movie, you know it's going to have a happy ending and it does. I won't go into it much further as I may go into a sugar-induced coma.

Which leads me nicely into my first point of this film: it is just too sugary sweet. I do want to mention right off the bat, I have nothing against cute little orphans in the movies. I loved Annie and Oliver, but unless they are singing and dancing they can become overly annoying very quickly.

I do see the character of Curly Sue in the same light as Dodger from the aforementioned Oliver but, while his cockiness and conman attitude light up the screen and make the character fully dimensional, Curly Sue and her super strong punches become old, and do so quickly.

Then we have James Belushi. I always wondered why his career never really took off as his other Saturday Night Live counterparts had, but when you see that this was one of the leading man roles he picked, you can understand why (as a quick note my favourite James Belushi move is K-9, the one with the happier ending than Turner And Hooch).

It was to take a good ten years until he made it back on the screen in ABC's According To Jim, which, as an older and wiser actor, he suited the role of a father far more than he had a decade before.

The real killer in this film, though, is its over sentimentality. It is like the entire script was dipped in honey with a few thousand sugar sprinkles put on top of it.

Many of us like a happy ending but, unless you really were not paying attention, you saw this one coming a mile off. I like the odd surprise when I see a movie and Hughes had done that to great effect in the past, my favourite, in fact, being linked to a homeless drifter, John Candy's Del Griffith in Planes, Trains And Automobiles. You knew there would be some kind of friendship between the two leads but what you didn't see coming was the fact he had been drifting since his wife's death, again terribly sentimental but sentimentality that works in that case.

Curly Sue marks the last film John Hughes ever directed. He kept himself busy through the 1990s writing a string of successful family movies which included Beethoven (family takes on a loveable, yet destructive and messy St Bernard), Home Alone 2: Lost In New York (Macaulay Culkin gets lost again, this time in the Big Apple), Dennis The Menace (worth watching just for Walter Matthau), Baby's Day Out (Ferris Bueller in nappies), Miracle On 34th Street (Christmas classic), 101 Dalmatians (live action re-make of the Disney cartoon, another of my all time favourite kids movies), Flubber (Robin Williams in family friendly fare), Home Alone 3 (new kid takes on four robbers), Reach The Rock (filmed in association with his son), Just Visiting (never heard of it? Me either), Maid In Manhattan (fluffy J-Lo rom-com) and Drillbit Taylor (the story was done by Hughes and the script by Seth Rogan but it has Hughes stamped all over it).

Hughes now exists firmly out of the public eye; he rarely gives interviews and uses a pseudonym of Edmond Dantes when writing screenplays. But his presence can still be felt in movies today.

I, for one, would love to see Hughes back out behind a camera. I would like to see what he makes of the world now, but until then, he has left plenty of gems that can be re-watched again and again. And, don't worry, we won't ever forget about you....

Check out the rest of our John Hughes series: