An excellent film, but I may have an idea why it might not always hit the mark now....

Rating: 10/10 (9 August 2009)

Firstly, I admit it..I love The Breakfast Club. I was a teenager when it first came out and it remains the quintessential 80's Teen movie. John Hughes made great and entertaining films and it is sad that he is no longer with us, by far his best work are the teen flicks of the 80s.
Reading through the comments on here, I was initially really upset that some people hated it (how dare they!), but I have thought of a few reasons why.
Firstly, there will always be people who just don't like this sort of film. It's just a given.
Secondly there are people who are uneasy about the characters and how rigidly stereotyped they are. I understand this, but I also think I get why John Hughes made them this way. Obviously 'real' people are less defined and have a bit more of this or that in them, but my experience of school was that kids pigeon-hole people like crazy. If someone is big on sports that defines them, if someone is highly academic with no interest in sport they are 'a geek'. They are other things too, but this main characteristic is the 'essence' of who they are in high school terms. Brian says '....the most convenient definitions....' I think John Hughes simplified them to exaggerate this point.
Finally, and this is the sad reason. I think The Breakfast Club is victim of its own success. These films (The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, etc) paved the way for the teen movie format. They have been emulated, rewoven, and even copied. There have been so many teen flicks in the 25 years since The Breakfast Club was made, that I worry that it's near impossible for the modern teen to fully appreciate the films as I did when I was young. The Breakfast Club could seem clichéd even though it wasn't originally. It is a little slow by modern standards and the dialogue is occasionally dated. I wonder whether it would have been made if the script came along now; and that, my friends, would have been a great shame, because it really is a great movie and I don't believe the underlying messages are any less relevant now than they were then (eg prejudice, pigeon holing, petty authority, home life, wealth/poverty, understanding)
So, please do watch this film, forgive some of the dated vernacular and try to judge it sympathetically as an original format for its time. Then look at the world around you and see if you think the problems are really very much different!