Let’s make this a fast one. John Hughes is dead. We all know that. We all know it sucks. Was he great? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In that way, in the way that he spoke to our experiences and couched real life in his own special brand of comedy, he was kind of our generation’s Neil Simon.

So, real quick, let me rattle off for you my Top Five John Hughes Films, and then my Bottom Five John Hughes Films.

Ready?

High Five

1. Vacation.

Quote: “I think you’re all fucked in the head. We’re ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well, I’ll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest! It’s a quest for fun. I’m gonna have fun and you’re gonna have fun. We’re all gonna have so much fucking fun we’ll need plastic surgeory to remove our godamn smiles. You’ll be whistling ‘Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah’ out of your assholes! I gotta be crazy! I’m on a pilgrimage to see a moose. Praise Marty Moose! Holy Shit!” — Clark Griswold

This is not a safe movie. For it’s time — heck, even for now — it’s pretty dark. Dog dragged behind a car. Dead old lady. Hostage situation at an amusement park. But for all its madcap road-trip misery, Hughes knew how to touch something truly deep and dark about the suburban Middle Class experience: disappointment. Best quote from Hughes about the short story (“Vacation ’58,” which he wrote) on which he based the film:

“I used the voice of a boy to cover my lack of skill, and to flatten the big moments. In Rusty’s prosaic language, a ruined vacation and an assault with a deadly weapon upon an entertainment legend enjoyed comparable importance. I called to mind a clamor of relatives, situations, catchphrases, and behaviors. I was mindful of my feelings as a child witnessing phony pop inventions go to hell. I understood that the dark side of my middle-class, middle-American, suburban life was not drugs, paganism, or perversion. It was disappointment. There were no gnawing insects beneath the grass. Only dirt.

“I also knew that trapped inside every defeat is a small victory, and inside that small victory is the Great Defeat. This knowledge — along with a cranky old lady; strange, needy relatives; a vile dog; and everything that could possibly go wrong on a highway — was enough to make a story, plug a hole in the magazine, and get on to the next issue.”

2. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Quote: “I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I’m going to take a stand. I’m going to defend it. Right or wrong, I’m going to defend it.” — Cameron

Most of us, I think, are equal parts Ferris and Cameron. Id, Ego, and Super Ego, wrapped up in that pair. Once more, for all its absurdist trappings (Ferris dance parade, Abe Froman, the fact that a whole down quietly rallies behind this “dying boy”), it’s a movie that cuts deeper. It’s a movie about Cameron more than it is about Ferris. It’s about owning your shit. About being who you are, regardless. It’s about Oh My God Mia Sara is in her underwear. (Dear Internet: I cannot find photos of Mia Sara in the hot tub scene. You are a grave disappointment. You must be replaced by a better, smarter Internet. May I recommend the Infi-Net?)

3. Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Quote: “You know, everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You’re a miracle! Your stories have none of that. They’re not even amusing accidentally! ‘Honey, I’d like you to meet Del Griffith, he’s got some amusing anecodotes for you. Oh and here’s a gun so you can blow your brains out. You’ll thank me for it.’ I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, ‘How can you stand it?’ I’d say, ”Cause I’ve been with Del Griffith. I can take anything.’ You know what they’d say? They’d say, ‘I know what you mean. The shower curtain ring guy. Woah.’ It’s like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest, you know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except I wouldn’t pull it out and snap it back. You would.” – Neal Page

This might be Hughes’ best film, honestly. Hilarious, but always tinged with that persistent sadness that comes complicit with modern life. Neal is forever away from his family and his job sucks and his cabs are stolen and there’s never a rental car. Del… well, I won’t spoil it just in case you haven’t seen it, but Del’s troubles go deeper. John Candy rules this movie, though certainly Steve Martin is no slouch.

4. Dutch

Quote: “I don’t think you would have frozen. Not solid, anyway, it’s not quite cold enough for that. Here’s the deal, Dobsie: I don’t screw around. You piss me off, I react. I’m not your daddy, I’m not your friend, I’m not your uncle. I’m a working-class nobody, and I don’t take crap from kiddies.”

If the last one was Hughes’ best movie, this might be his best movie you haven’t seen. Ed O’Neill as the working class nobody, a tough guy with a tough life, dragging a spoiled rich kid across the wide open expanse of America’s slush-fucked highways. Really classic. I have this idea that, the sons of fathers are always less than their fathers, at least in some fashion — it’s a generational thing, that the generation that preceded us was always tougher, meaner, better. This is very much about that. It’s about trying to salvage some semblance of ability and forthrightness. It’s about trying to reverse the pussification of our spoiled generation. Great stuff. The fact that the kid in this is basically the enemy (until the end) is such a reversal of what you’d expect, too — these days, the pseudo-stepfather would be the bad guy. Not here. Love this movie. (Oh, and second best quote: “Nothing burps better than bacon!”)

5. Uncle Buck

Quote: “I don’t think I want to know a six-year-old who isn’t a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don’t want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don’t have a college degree. I don’t even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they’re ALL good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they’re no good. You so much as scowl at my niece, or any other kid in this school, and I hear about it, and I’m coming looking for you! … Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face! Good day to you, madam.”

Listen, this was a hard one to put here. First, you have Some Kind of Wonderful, which is like a reverse (read: good) version of Pretty In Pink, and then you have Career Opportunities, which may not be a truly great movie, but hell if it didn’t introduce us to Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly. But this one’s just too damn funny. Another John Candy standout, with him as the blue-collar lunatic forced to grow up a little bit and watch his nieces and nephew. Making giant pancakes and flipping them with a snow shovel? Threatening to kill the grabby boyfriend, Bug? Microwaving their clothes to dry them? Good times. Bonus quote: “I think he’s cooking our garbage.”

Low Five

1. Curly Sue.

*vomits*

Really, John Hughes? Homeless folks with a heart of gold! She’s so cute!

*vomits again*

2. Home Alone (1, 2, 3)

I get it. I might be in the minority. But I am so not a fan of this. I just want those robbers to die in a house fire, and I want Macaulay Culkin’s character to get, like, locked in the washing machine for the rest of the movie. I don’t want him hurt. I just want him in claustrophobic agony. Not a good movie. Not a funny movie. It’s more one of those movies where humiliation is a top menu choice.

3. European Vacation

Okay, yes, it has funny parts. But compared to the first and the third, this is like donkey shit shoved between two slices of delicious artisanal bread. It loses the “Isn’t life disappointing?” angle, and instead becomes a goofy farce about Americans and Europeans. Skip it.

4. Pretty In Pink

She doesn’t end up with Ducky. That’s the problem. Bzzt. No.

5. Anything After 1992

See, that’s the secret shame. Hughes lost his stuff, I think. Beethoven, Dennis the Menace, Flubber — just a parade of kiddie claptrap and mawkish pap. Sad, because really, he spoke to a lot of people about a lot of things, even as early as Sixteen Candles. But then he just stopped speaking with his voice, and… wandered off the path, I guess. Happens to a lot of the best. Maybe all of them, if you let them create long enough.