A Brat Pack Classic

Rating: 10/10 (4 February 2011)

In this film five very unlikely students end up becoming friends during a Saturday detention. They end up opening up to one another and learning more about each other in one day than most learn in years of friendships. After the discoveries made throughout the day, they decide to call themselves The Breakfast Club. With all these students learn and go through together, it would be best said that it is a coming of age film with hints of judgment and stereotyping: many things in which teenagers go through at this time in their lives.
For Clair (Molly Ringwald) and Andrew (Emilio Estevez), they fall under the popular clique so they have had previous interactions. While the nerd of the morning falls on Brian (Anthony Michael Hall). Then, there is always that troubled one in the group whose home life make them the bad-ass they get labeled is that Bender (Judd Nelson). Lastly, what group would be complete without that of the kooky member, which falls to Allison (Ally Sheedy). Without each of these roles the coming together, the group may not have had as large an impact in how they end up by the end of this film. In some small way, they take steps in no longer caring what others may think. Instead, they think for themselves, for the future.
Everything occurs for the most part in one room of a school and with this simple setting, using open lighting helps one put more focus on each character and how they change through out the day. Allison and Bender seem to have the most growth during the movie. Sheedy does an amazing job in the beginning showing off the eccentric side of Allison. While Bender keeps his hard edge. It makes it more understandable who he is and what he silently needs. He finds out those things in this group of different kids – people he never dreamed he could befriend. But in each other, they all find what none of them could find before – themselves.
In some ways, no matter the decade, I think this movie shows that you can find the best things in life in the most unlikely of places; certainly these five students did. Every adolescent has felt or been in a situation where they could relate to one or more of these characters whether it was like the odd one out like Allison, the nerdy geek like Brian, the troubled like Bender or the popular/jock standing like Clair and Andrew. Everyone is being judged by others that are different from them. It's a part of coming of age.