"Being bad feels pretty good, huh?"

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 2018)

Ah yes, the quintessential teenage angst movie. Though I'm way past the target audience age for this picture, I can relate to some of those feelings I had when I was a high school student myself, many, many moons ago. Today I'm sure, the pressures on young students have to be considerably greater than the ones experienced by the Brat Packers appearing in this picture over three decades ago (as I write this), certainly a lot more than when I was a student going back a half century. But the primary issues still remain - how to fit in, how to find one's place in the world, how to appeal to the opposite sex, and on and on.
The thing I found particularly compelling was teacher Vernon's (Paul Gleason) assignment. He asked the students to write an essay on 'who they THOUGHT they were'. That's distinctively different from asking them 'WHO they were'. There may be some subtlety there for the average person, but if one were to be honest and offer a careful reflection, 'WHO' one is and who one "THINKS' they are ought to be pretty close, unless some serious self denial exists. Of course that could be a definite possibility, as perhaps in the case of Allison (Ally Sheedy). Her Goth exterior masked a sensitive person aching to break out, with the group dynamic offering an opportunity to show her true self.
The character I felt to be most a parody of a real person was Judd Nelson's 'Bender'. His dialog and actions were so over the top and inflammatory that under real life circumstances, someone like Andy Clark (Emilio Estevez) probably would have decked him early in the picture. The eventual camaraderie that developed among the five students felt more like a function of the screenplay than what actual high school students might have come up with on their own.
The biggest problem I had with the story was the actual punishment - nine hours!!! detention on a Saturday seemed almost unconscionable. And for Vernon to commit himself to nine more weeks of it at the expense of Bender's behavior only said to this viewer that he seriously needed to get a life. But overall, the picture did convey a lot of the feelings one might have had back in the grueling days of high school with all it's attendant trials and tribulations. Having just experienced my own high school graduating class's fiftieth reunion (yikes!!!), I can fairly say there were some things I would have liked to do over again if given half a chance.