Thompson's Amanda is from the same neighborhood but has notions of grandeur and is trying to infiltrate the high school jet set. Masterson's not-so-little Drummer Girl is a tomboy who's been Keith's platonic pal since third grade and, at this particular moment, is into a massive crush on one oblivious dude: 'If you wanted to, you could be a girl just like that|' Keith advises her at one point, then practices kissing for his big date with Amanda Jones. For instance, Stoltz's Keith is the senior and after-school mechanic who dreams of being a painter, though his dad wants him to be the first in the family not to have to wash his hands after work. Hughes relies on stock characters - the sensitive outsider, the sympathetic punk, the obnoxious preppy, precocious younger brothers and sisters, peripheral parents - though they tend to be slightly off center. These are pretty nice kids in pretty nice circumstances - urban essence is something they'd be likely to use on their hair - and their traumas tend toward such matters as getting a date and being seen with the right people.

This time it's an 18-year-old boy (Eric Stoltz of 'Mask') who's stuck in the middle, longing for the lovely Lea Thompson, longed for by pert tomboy Mary Stuart Masterson. 'Wonderful' offers a gender flip on 'Pink's' tender triangle. He still has an ear for the details of teen language and emotional terrain, but Deutch, who also directed 'Pretty in Pink,' hasn't figured out how to translate Hughes' vision. Unfortunately, something got lost when Hughes moved from directing to writing. Nothing much happens externally 'Some Kind of Wonderful,' but there's a whole lot going on inside. There's no sex in these Hughes films, just aching affairs of the heart. how significant all those insignificant little details can be. While most other writers and directors reduce their portraits of boys and girls to sex fantasies and the happiness of pursuit, earlier Hughes films like 'Sixteen Candles' and 'The Breakfast Club' focused on the reality: how, on those rare occasions when they come out right, words get in the way. Because Hughes has such a keen empathy for the tribulations of teenhood - some would call it an obsession - it's not at all strange that he'd be willing to spend a whole film as a prelude to a kiss, as he did in 'Pink.' 'Some Kind of Wonderful,' written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch is, like their last project, 'Pretty in Pink,' slight but sweet, a snapshot of three teen-agers' quest for identity. ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ (PG-13) By Richard Harrington

Amanda jones some kind of wonderful