Revisting A Classic

Rating: 9/10 (10 November 2018)

Imagine that a contemporary high school student is having a conflict with a teacher and brings a gun to school, and that gun goes off in his locker. Damn, the whole school would be on lockdown and the kid would be in handcuffs lickity split. That's actually a minor and overlooked story element in the 1985 hit film "The Breakfast Club," in which five kids from different cliques are required to attend Saturday in-school suspension. I just rewatched the movie and was surprised when the dorky character played by Anthony Michael Hall tells his classmates he had failed a project in Shop Class, which is why he brought the gun to school and got Saturday suspension. The other kids were dumbfounded that it would even be possible to fail a shop project, or that it would matter enough to be depressed or angry. The gun part of the story barely registered with them at all. When The Breakfast Club was released in 1985 the Columbine massacre was still 14 years away, and a short in-school suspension seemed like a completely reasonable way to deal with a depressed kid bringing a loaded gun to school. Oh my! How times have changed after just a few (hundred) school shootings.
(The Breakfast Club is still a pretty good film, by the way.)