A perfectly captured snapshot of teen awareness

Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2007)

Having recently written a review for John Hughes' Sixteen Candles, I now write about the film that many consider his best work, The Breakfast Club.
Although I feel Hughes' best teen film is Ferris Bueller's Day Off, TBC comes in as a close second. Its certainly his most dramatic teen film. Indeed its a seminal 80s classic.
TBC comes with a very simple conceit. Five teenagers are stuck in Saturday detention. All different kids from different walks of life. And they're all in detention for wildly different reasons. At first glance, they have nothing in common except being in detention on Saturday. But appearances can be deceiving.
Our teen quintet includes Andy Clark (Emilio Estevez), the Jock. Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall), the Nerd. John Bender (Judd Nelson), the Rebel. Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald), the Prom Princess. And Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy), the Misfit.
You've probably noticed each one of them represents a various stereotype. Each individual teen is a mouthpiece for a different clique or minority. And each actor does a superb job inhabiting the character Hughes has written for them.
You'd almost swear Hughes had each actor in mind when he was still writing the screenplay. TBC is one of John Hughes' most aptly cast films. At least until Planes, Trains & Automobiles.
TBC is also very stagebound. It begins and ends in this Chicago (well where else!) high school. Once the teens arrive there, they never leave it. In fact the majority of the story is told within the confines of the school library. We seldom see anything else.
Hughes was wise not to include any extraneous subplots outside of school. He knew the crux and focus should be these five disparate souls. That's where our interest lies. And its why the film works so well.
All Hughes has to do is put the five of them in a room together, and sit back and wait for things to happen. Although they're quite different people, they all react to they're situation with the same response, frustration. Some of them are just better at concealing it than others. (A quote from the film actually!).
With almost astonishing smoothness, wondrous things begin to happen right before our very eyes. We see Bender act out his sheer contempt for the high school system by picking on the nearest convenient targets. Either the teens he's sharing detention with. Or Principal Vernon (Paul Gleason), the man who's brought them together.
Claire feels someone at the top of the high school tree shouldn't be stuck in detention. And I suspect the same of Andrew. Brian may be a straight A student but I'll bet he can't figure out how he ended up here. And Allison is a passive observer. She hardly ever speaks. Her reasons for being here are as much a mystery to her co-conspirators as it is to us.
You wouldn't think a story centred around five teens sharing detention would be so involving. But it is. And more. Its rewarding, fascinating, moving and even surprisingly funny. Each actor carefully and astutely engages in self-analysis, before cautiously sharing that knowledge with each other.
Its hard to say who gives the best performance. Most people single out Judd Nelson's powerhouse acting for high praise, and while he's certainly impressive, he's not the standout. Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez and Anthony Michael Hall all work wonders with roles that tend to get bogged down in clichés. But for me, its Ally Sheedy who steals the show.
Ally Sheedy is sometimes difficult to like. She often projects an aloof quality that very easily keeps you at a distance. And its for that reason why she inhabits Allison so well. For the first half of the film, Allison isn't allowed to say anything. Only sit and watch. But in an impeccably controlled bit of acting, Sheedy carefully sheds the layers she's built up around herself. And does it in the subtlest of ways.
Like chipping in to defend Bender from Vernon along with everyone else. You can almost sense her growing weary with being the outside observer. She wants to learn more about these people who have been forced together by circumstance. And when she finally engages in conversation, its a real shock moment. Surely the finest bit of acting Ally Sheedy has ever done.
But everyone else each has their individual moments to shine. Molly Ringwald brings the same keen intuition to Claire that she brought to Samantha in Sixteen Candles. In fact all of them sharply play their roles against all expectations.
John Hughes has a real knack for matching the perfect actors to the characters he creates. He refuses to work with generics. He makes sure there is always some truth to be found in everyone. I'm not sure how much of this film was improvised, but I sense Hughes allowed the actors to discover each other in they're own time. The jewel in the crown is the scene where they share they're reasons for being here. A scene of equal heart, humour and poignant truth.
The way dialogue flows is extraordinary. The five of them absorb you into the story without barely making a point of it. And although some of the revelations are not unexpected, like putting on an aggressive front to hide insecurities, the characters feel so fleshed out you'll barely notice.
Hughes' keen ear for teenspeak is particularly astute here. The film is so compelling you never want it to end. But sadly it must. And when they part company, there's an unshakable feeling of poignance. These five innocents shared everything on this fateful Saturday. Come Monday morning, they may only know each other as just another face in the halls. And that's sad.
The Breakfast Club is one of the defining teen films of its genre. A haunting, knowing and often devastating portrait of teen angst and aggression.