Sixteen Candles has 25 candles on its birthday cake this week -- it was released May 4, 1984 -- but it hasn't aged a day. John Hughes, who wrote and directed it, had a knack for making comedies that stay fresh indefinitely. As noted in a previous "Time Capsule," his Planes, Trains & Automobiles could be remade today with the same screenplay, adjusting only for the advent of cell phones. Likewise, Sixteen Candles is anchored to the 1980s only in external details like its soundtrack and its characters' clothes and hairstyles. The story and dialogue are timeless.

Filmmakers don't always try to achieve timelessness, of course, nor should they. Sometimes a movie will only work at a certain juncture in history. Breakin', about breakdancing, was released the same day as Sixteen Candles, and it obviously wasn't hoping for a long shelf life. But it's frustrating to see how many movies throw in unnecessary pop-cultural references that seem witty now but render the film obsolete within a couple years. (This is often what people mean when they say a movie "hasn't aged well.") The spoof flicks like Meet the Spartans and the Scary Movie series are so entrenched in mid-2000s culture that in 10 years they will be not only unfunny (which they are now) but incomprehensible. And sometimes it backfires immediately: The recent hit He's Just Not That Into You remained finished but unreleased for so long that its references to MySpace -- now supplanted by Facebook -- make it seem, instead of au courant, hopelessly un-hip.

I don't know if Hughes intentionally avoided explicit references to current events and trends in his films, or if it was just his natural style. But it's one thing that separates him from Judd Apatow, who has often been compared to him but whose films (as director or producer) are rife with of-the-moment references. I wonder if we'll still find The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up as funny in 25 years as we do now.

Though Sixteen Candles was Hughes' fifth produced screenplay, it was the first one he'd direct himself. It established a lot of the elements that would recur in his later films, including the casting of Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, the heavy use of pop songs on the soundtrack, the focus on teenage angst, and the technique of having a character address the camera directly (which Hall's nerd character does late in the film).

It's easy to see why Sixteen Candles was popular at the time and has remained a favorite of the teen genre: It's relatable. Rather than making Samantha (Molly Ringwald) a social outcast, which relatively few viewers would be able to empathize with, Hughes makes her merely ordinary, which reflects almost everyone's high school experience. Samantha's parents forget her 16th birthday but realize their mistake and grovelingly apologize for it -- exactly the kind of reversal-of-power scenario that teenagers fantasize about constantly, and a regular part of most adolescent fiction, where kids outsmart, act independently of, or otherwise prove superior to adults. It goes without saying that Samantha gets the boy of her dreams at the end, too.

In other words, the film is nothing but teenage wish fulfillment -- Hughes' genius is in making the fantasy seem true-to-life. The characters, after all, are very real, even if some of the situations they get into are outlandish. The scene where Samantha and her father (Paul Dooley) have a heart-to-heart is genuinely touching, as Dad comes across not as a clueless buffoon or an uncaring tyrant or any of the other things movie dads usually are, but a sincere father who loves his daughter and gives honest, useful advice. I suspect that's ultimately how most girls remember their fathers, don't you?

Hughes would work this magic again in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where the title character's behavior is so carefree and insouciant that we want to be him, even though deep down we suspect what we're seeing isn't very realistic. Similarly, Hughes' Home Alone screenplay (directed by Chris Columbus) has a kid's fantasy right there in its title, then puts the child in a series of implausible but highly satisfying scenarios. The plot of The Breakfast Club strains credulity, yet its characters are so archetypal -- the nerd, the jock, etc. -- that the poster for the 2008 documentary American Teen imitated it. The specifics of nerdery and jockiness have changed over the years, you see, but the basic types have not. That's why Hughes' teen-centric films will still be resonating with viewers two decades from now, long after the films that seek only to speak to these kids in this generation have been forgotten.

FROM THE TIME CAPSULE: When Sixteen Candles was released, 25 years ago this week, on May 4, 1984...

• It did well at the box office, opening in second place behind fellow newcomer Breakin'. Romancing the Stone and Police Academy, both several weeks old, were still doing well, too.

• The most popular shows on TV were Dallas, 60 Minutes, Dynasty, and The A Team.

• The top song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was Phil Collins' "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)," to be followed by Lionel Ritchie's "Hello."

• Actress America Ferrera was a few weeks old. Photographer Ansel Adams and musician Count Basie had just died. Comedian Andy Kaufman would die 12 days later.

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"Eric's Time Capsule" appears every Monday at Film.com. You can visit Eric at his website, where we're not even going to address the subject of Long Duk Dong.

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