Average movie, brilliant sociology

Rating: 5/10 (26 November 2008)

This movie is about five wildly different teenagers who, over the course of a day in detention, learn about themselves and each other. One of these teens is played by Judd Nelson. If you've gotten through those first two sentences without barfing, you might get a kick out of "The Breakfast Club." It's not a bad movie, despite the absence of plot and presence of Nelson. However, it's trying to be a portrait of a generation, and it fails miserably. If you want to know what high school was like for most of us in the 80s, try "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "Heathers." But if you want to know what high school was like for .02% of the American teenaged population, i.e. those who attended high school in a North Shore suburb of Chicago, then "Breakfast Club" is practically a documentary. Having dated (and married) a succession of women from this area, I can assure you that the students at New Trier, Glenbrook North, etc etc were just like Andy, Brian, Claire, etc etc -- self-absorbed, status-conscious and (back then at least) whiter than Arm & Hammer baking soda.
For an iconic 80s movie, it sure has a stereotypical 60s perspective -- kids good, adults bad. There's also a trace of 70s smarm inasmuch as this movie posits that everything will be fine if you get stoned and talk about your problems. Whatever -- no one ever accused John Hughes of having great depth or insight, he's just a hack who turned his case of arrested development into a string of highly profitable schmaltz-fests. But in the mid-1980s there was so little of importance happening in popular culture that Hughes was heralded as some kind of artist. Furthermore, his young actors were proclaimed The Stars Of Tomorrow. They weren't. That's actually kind of a shame in the case of Molly Ringwald, who is genuinely attractive and talented but has been a punch line since 1988 after playing the same whiny brat in, like, 300 movies. In "Breakfast Club," she portrays the whiniest brat of them all: Claire, the "Princess" character. Claire is pretty, popular and stuck up, but as you can probably guess, her polished facade masks almost unbearable pain, and she's more than willing to tell you about it. (Sad to say, I knew people in the 80s who said they could identify with Claire. Sadder to say, most of them were guys.) Anthony Michael Hall was never going to do "Hamlet," but at this point in his non-career he showed some comic ability and as Brian, the "Nerd" character, he gets more mileage out of his terminally dumbfounded facial expression than he ever would again. Emilio Estevez probably wouldn't have risen above community theater without his family connections, but at least he's a better actor than his brother Charlie (faint praise, of course) and he seems to grasp the intended complexity of Andy, the "Jock" character, even if he can't convey any of it. Ally Sheedy isn't bad as Allison, the "Crazy" character, but she's probably there because Jennifer Jason Leigh wanted too much money and Winona Ryder was too young. (It should also be noted that if "Breakfast Club" was set in 1995, Winona would have played Allison as a Goth, been the heroine of the picture and walked off with an Oscar, bad joke intended.) As for Judd Nelson as "Bender" the burnout, well . . . someone should have told him that "angry" does not always mean "yelling," "intense" does not mean "creepy unblinking bug-eyed stare," and "chewing the scenery" is a metaphor for overacting, not a way to prepare for a role. (Seriously, he waddles on screen in his first scene like he's just swallowed the entire set of "Risky Business." Maybe he did. Has anyone seen that Porsche?) Still, every young man who dreams of a career on the silver screen should be made to watch Nelson's performance in "Breakfast Club." It's the thespian version of "Scared Straight."