21 iconic on-screen kisses to give you all the feelings

Sixteen Candles – Sam and Jake Ryan

Imagine this scenario. It’s your sixteenth birthday, and your entire family forgets about it because it’s also your older sister’s wedding the next day. You’d obviously be mad, but for Sam in Sixteen Candles, it kinda works out in her favor in the end.

Like every teenage girl, Sam is in love with the hunkiest boy in her school, the popular senior Jake Ryan. Obviously a plain sophomore like her could never land a guy like Jake, and she’s mortified when she fills out a sex quiz to slip to her friend Randy, and Jake finds it instead. It’s no big deal…except for the fact that she admits to being a virgin and jokes that she’s saving herself for Jake Ryan.

Everything goes wrong for Sam, because besides her entire family forgetting her birthday, her house is as hectic as can be leading up to her sister’s wedding, with both sets of grandparents staying with them as well as a strange (and, looking back, pretty offensive) foreign exchange student named Long Duk Dong, whom they insist Sam brings to the senior dance.

To make a long story short, after a wild night of messy, drunken teenage antics at Jake’s house for the afterparty, he ends up finding Sam’s number but gets tongue-tied when her grandparents answer instead of her. He goes to her house the next morning but Long Duk Dong says she’s at the church getting married (because his English is terrible). When Sam leaves the church, she sees Jake waiting outside by his car, and Sam finally gets to celebrate her birthday properly with Jake.

To end the movie on a high note, Sam and Jake share a kiss over a birthday cake, which is complete with 16 candles — just like the name of the movie!