The Greatest "High School" Film of All Time!

Rating: 9/10 (26 January 2007)

The Breakfast Club is an emotional powerhouse of high school life! Five people from many different diverse backgrounds are forced to share a Saturday detention together. After almost nine hours, they bare their souls to each other and actually become friends. (Well, to varying degrees.) This is a movie that you feel, because it portrays the "cliques" characters associated with high school life with such passion and power that you the viewer believe after watching this unforgettable film that you have known these people all your life! The Breakfast Club IS Andy, Claire, Brian, Alison, and John.
The late Paul Gleason is chillingly realistic as the principle and disciplinarian. The tension that exists in his many verbal confrontations with John Bender (the most troubled and rebellious) is so dramatic, and captivating that it represents some of the finest moments that you will ever see in a movie! These kids and Mr. Gleason should have won Oscars for their performances because they were all THAT good! One may wonder, why haven't I rated this gem a full perfect 10/10? The Breakfast Club is SOOOOOOO good on so many levels that it hurts to find flaws with it, but here goes:
1.) Carl The Janitor: The one guy that just doesn't work in this otherwise landmark film. He doesn't seem to have all that much to say except react differently to how Mr. Vernon and he feel about kids. It's not like he's a bad guy to have in the movie, just unnecessary. Bender makes a few snide remarks about him, and than we have a few lines of dialog when he and Vernon are in Vernon's office, and that's it. It's like Hughes said, "Well, the setting is a Saturday School detention, so we can throw in a janitor." He simply didn't need to be there and did practically nothing for plot or character development.
2.) SPOILER! Bender being nice to Claire at the end: NO!!! NO!!!! Sorry!!! I don't buy it!
The movie builds up with such friction where it is the worst between Mr. Vernon and John Bender. (Two people that would want to KILL one another because they hate each other so much.) Second worst friction is Bender's thoughtless and vindictive comments to Claire throughout the film. Remember this gem: Bender: (To Claire) "Don't you EVER TALK ABOUT MY FRIENDS!!! YOU DON'T KNOW ANY OF MY FRIENDS, YOU DON'T LOOK AT ANY OF MY FRIENDS, AND YOU CERTAINLY WOULDN'T STOOP SO LOW AS TO SPEAK TO ANY OF MY FRIENDS!!!! AS FAR AS YOU AND I WAKING DOWN THE HALL TOGETHER YOU CAN FORGET IT!!!!! CUZ IT'S NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!!! JUST GO BURY YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND, AND WAIT FOR YOUR F***ING PROM!!!"
Claire: (Crying and sobbing) "I hate you, you know!" Bender: "Yea??? GOOD!!!!!" But toward the end of the film, we see Claire GIVING John one of her earrings and a goodbye kiss!!!???? Are you kidding me??!! Than he tries to initiate closer contact but she stops him. I can't believe that they would do that. He'd walk up to her, give Claire and extended middle finger and spit in her face. That IS John Bender. Some of the physical make-overs seem to reflect the writers/or directors beliefs that emotional personalities can change when a woman changes her appearance with make-up and lipstick. Hughes take a too-easy and simple way out here. Let's make John nice to Claire so that we can have at least two of the group give us this, "And some lived happily ever after."
This movie would be a perfect 10 if Claire and John would have hated each other throughout. At least take out the exchange of the earring for a kiss. It brings down the whole friction and tension that existed so well between these two characters.
I also believe that you need to be 40 or under to see The Breakfast Club and experience its most dramatic effects and inner-messages about group cliques and high school life. Adults older than that may not care enough about the characters the way the 70's-80's generation does. For people in that 70-80's cohort, many LIVED THE LIVES of these kids. Be 40 or below and take yourself back to many changing times and difficulties associated with high-school acceptance. If you can empathize with the 40 and under age, or couldn't fit in at your high school other than already established social cliques, this is a shattering and powerful movie that will never be forgotten.
Score 9/10