I don't really have any thing constructive to add to this comment other than it's awesome, and now I want to rework my way through basically all of these movies.Go watch Breakfast Club and compare it to St. Elmo's Fire. Pretty in Pink? Yeah, problematic from this point 30 years in the future but I mean, the man made Home Alone. Breakfast Club allowed him to make Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller allowed him to make Some Kind of Wonderful, and nobody saw Some Kind of Wonderful so from that point forth it was all Beethoven and Flubber.
Only a couple of them are brilliant. A lot of them are situational. Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, for example, tie into a teen angst that is very different from Say Anything even though there are actors, directors and screenwriters in common. Bad Boys with Sean Penn is spiritually closer to Boys Town with Spencer Tracy than it is to anything modern. OftenBen isn't wrong when he argues that there's an "emotional touchstone" that if you lack it, you lack it; I saw Princess Bride in theaters so I'm squarely of an age where '80s nostalgia is at its peak. What's interesting is if you look up lists of '80s movies, they say more about the list makers than the movies. IMDb? Clearly a bunch of drama kids that nobody listens to anymore so they take it out on polls - that ranking is basically "what movies are the most about misunderstood nerds" in which Duckie from Pretty in Pink is the apex. Collider? "We've never been as cool as we deserve to be even though we've always TRIED REALLY HARD." Cosmo? "24 ways to curate a film list that will make that man think you're cultured and quirky." Seventeen? "Here's a list to pick and choose from when your parents insist you watch something from their childhoods." Ranker? "here are keywords that are searched a lot." Ferris Bueller is structurally complex. BTTF more so. They're both rewarding, and they're four, maybe five hours of your life. They're definitely 40 years old, though. What's funny is comparing the morality and perfidity to modern stuff - you used to be able to get away with much more risque storylines and filming. Fast Times at Ridgemont High is, in many ways, seamier than Skins. Some of them are worth watching just because of what they encapsulate.