Prepare to hate me.

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 1998)

I just don't get it. I am a teenager, but I can't imagine why anyone would like the Breakfast Club. This movie treats humanity and high school like a series of social stereotypes that play themselves out to a happy ending. This was, I believe, my least favorite film of the 80s...and one of my 5 least favorite of all time. Let's examine what is really being said in this film...
OK, every high school has a boring jock, a mean and boring bully, a mean and boring prom queen, an interesting-but-flawed "basket case," and a nice nerd. That's the set-up, right? Now, add a completely one-dimensional principal and an overly sympathetic janitor...shake...and serve...The kids will eat it up, but what are we really eating?
As far as I can tell, this film has three messages. Even if a person has a very interesting personality, they must abandon their individuality and date a complete jerk. Ally Sheedy's "basket case," one of the film's two interesting characters, is forced at the end to lose her personality so that she can be an acceptable partner for the jock. Molly Ringwald's "princess," one of the film's five bad characters, is forced to ignore how awfully Judd Nelson treated her, just because he is an abused child. While it is true that Sheedy's character wasn't completely noble or realistic at first, when she put on the make-up and became a Ringwald, she lost every ounce of credibility that she might have kept. I felt awful that someone who had such character would lose it so quickly.
The second message seems to be the fact that adults are stupid and evil, unless they are on the kids' side. The principal and the parents are bad, the janitor is good. Very realistic...
The third message is that even if prom queens can get together with bullies and jocks can get together with basket cases, there is no chance that anyone would ever be interested in the nerd...who happens to be the only nice guy in the movie.
This film is supposed to be the greatest of all American teen angst films, but by stripping away the credibility of its already stereotypical characters, and by promoting other teen stereotypes (the nerd, the adults...), it is actually doing a disservice to the American teen. If you want a good film about teens, throw BC in the garbage where it belongs and watch another Hughes...Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Or better yet, watch a foreign film.