The essential coming of age film for the eighties

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2007)

The Breakfast Club is for its generation in many ways what I feel The Graduate was for the late sixties. It captures the generation and in some small iconic way manages to make bold statements with seemingly 'teen film' type dialect. Anytime anyone hears 'The Breakfast Club' they fondly remember it making this an absolute classic and giving it deeper meaning than what it might appear to have. The Breakfast Club didn't treat teens like kids but rather portrayed them frankly, openly, and unabashedly, . It took stereotypes that are still to this day very existent in any high school, mixed them together and let every single one of those stereotypes have their moment and explain their side. It even went so far as to show the stick togetherness of youth and the eighties theme of wanting more from life and confusion and being young in an adult ruled world. The Breakfast Club is timeless.
For all it's simplicity the cast nail every one of their roles and become icons to every teen out there. The story and cast seem to focus on John Bender played with eerie certainty by Judd Nelson. Bender is the bad ass in every sense of the word. He's the kid that skips school, breaks all the rules, does dope, drinks, has the hard home life, the bully, the shop class kid and he manages to incorporate all of this into a character you end up rooting for somehow. Even the other kids in the detention with him despise him and yet seem to look to him for leadership and come out with a better understanding of where he's coming from. He is the rebel to say the least. Nelson's portrayal is one of the movie greats hands down. Emilio Estevez is terrific as the jock Andy Clark who also has the reputation for bully against the kids who aren't as athletic or 'cool' as he is. Estevez has a quiet demeanor in most of the film and yet is very effective in showing a different style of parental control that somehow matches Bender's but is very different. Anthony Michael Hall is just brilliant as the brainy Brian Johnson who is the most down to earth out of all of them and seemingly the one with the most academic potential and yet you feel the most sorry for in the life he leads inside the school walls. He might be the most unfortunate out of the group socially and it's wearing thin on his mental state. He too turns in a brilliantly quiet performance. This might have been the performance of teen queen Molly Ringwald's career as the snobby, popular, and self obsessed Claire Standish who wants nothing more than to break the mold she has made for herself. She longs to rebel. Ringwald is just amazing in her role. Ally Sheedy is also good as the quiet, disturbed, rather odd Allison Reynolds. Honestly I didn't get or appreciate her character or performance as much as some of the other ones but nonetheless I'm sure others consider her performance brilliant and that's what The Breakfast Club is all about....appealing to everyone in a different way. Regardless the core cast of teens in detention are terrific and their firecracker intensity and chemistry is unmistakable whether fighting like mad dogs with each other or covering for one of the others' mistakes. Paul Gleason turns in a memorable and classic performance as Richard Vernon, the tired, and worn out teacher who is left to watch the Saturday Detention kids. He's harsh and abrasive and downright fed up with kids in general it would seem. Basically he appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As basically the only adult in the film and the only character outside of the core kids group he does a good job.
The Breakfast Club is so incredibly basic. A cast of basically six people, all set in a library and briefly in other sections of the school and yet it's like an hour and a half adventure. They learn so much about each other, and themselves and rebellion and life outside of school and it's all just from being with each other who happen to be polar opposites of each other. It's just brilliant. I have no doubt that sometime in the future...probably soon...The Breakfast Club will be remade and it simply will never capture the original magic because I'm not sure they even knew what they were doing. There is just a certain honesty to the characters, a certain brilliance to it's simplicity. It's not perfect, I mean ultimately it is a 'teen flick' and many adults who didn't see it as a kid won't ever understand it. The film is chock full of gratuitous foul language, sexual references, drug use (by the kids) and yet this is life...this is what is dealt with then and today and probably in the future...this is more reality than it is fiction. At the same time the film is darkly hilarious, has some incredible one liners, and manages some romance which for me is where the film hits a stand still. The brief romance between Ringwald and Nelson is perfect for the film because as he points out to her, making out with him and getting even with her parents "...in that capacity, would be outstanding." It's rebellion not romance. But the sudden and forced romance between Andy (the Jock) and Allison (the outcast) is ridiculous and unnecessary but then again it's a very 'eighties' kind of move. All Allison needs is a make over by the popular girl and the popular jock is all over her...it's a dream come true. I think it clashes with the main message of the film. Nonetheless you can't exist until you've seen The Breakfast Club. It's a stone cold classic and a must see. 8.5/10