High school fantasy...

Rating: 5/10 (30 September 2005)

Group of cynical teenagers spend a day's detention together in their high school library. When "The Breakfast Club" hit theaters in 1985, I was just a few years older than these kids and I still didn't relate to them... Their slang is meant to get laughs (it's on a broad scale), but most of the regular dialogue is over-the-top as well--such as Emilio Estevez's embarrassing monologue about covering some nerdy, naked kid with tape. The students are extremely bitter (even Molly Ringwald's girl from the popular clique, whom we never get to know); writer-director John Hughes hopes to fill in the gaps with shock-laughs, some of which register and some don't (Ally Sheedy's loner at one point says she wants vodka, but never again gives any hint that she's an alkie; Hughes tries to cover by making her a compulsive liar). There's a laughable built-in apologia for the kids' problems (blame it on their folks), and a "romantic" wrap-up that smacks of commercialism. The young cast is colorful and wiseass funny (with the exception of Judd Nelson, over-doing the schoolyard bully shtick); they make the sketchy material seem better than it is, for "The Breakfast Club" is just a high school fantasy that only pretends to be based in a recognizable reality. ** from ****