We remember when John Hughes ruled

Coincidence is a funny thing, right? I spent a couple of hours in the cool dark on Tuesday afternoon watching the immensely forgettable movie “Sleepover.” It reminded me more than anything else of a “Sixteen Candles” clone without the funny characters, situations or dialogue. And, of course, it didn’t have the great Anthony Michael Hall.

Then later that night, while doing a thumb surf over the several thousand digital cable channels on my big-screen TV, I came across what else but Hall, Molly Ringwald and a very young John and Joan Cusack in the John Hughes film about a teenage girl (Ringwald) enduring, not enjoying, her 16th birthday. And everything that I wrote earlier that afternoon about “Sleepover” proved true.

Which is sad because Joe Nussbaum, the director of “Sleepover,” isn’t without talent. His 1999 short film “George Lucas in Love” is a clever, funny eight-minute look at how George Lucas might have been inspired to create his “Star Wars” series. Just goes to show you that talent doesn’t always make the difference. After all, M. Night Shyamalan’s second feature film, and his first Hollywood effort, was the lame Catholic-school effort “Wide Awake.”

It’d be nice to think that Nussbaum has a “The Sixth Sense” in him.