John Hughes Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 2016)

I love this movie so much, both for reasons peculiar to me and because it is just beautifully made.
The basic idea is simple; five high schoolers who fit into archetypes like nerd or popular girl spend a Saturday in detention and begin to connect outside of the normal high school paradigms.
The movie is, to a great degree, about the traps we make for ourselves, and the movie is clever for making you think you know exactly who these characters are in the first 20 minutes and then showing you the more complex reality.
The movie is well acted and nicely structured. It mainly goes for a reasonably realistic approach, although at times it goes a little crazy, as in a scene in the halls that is reminiscent of the musical sequences in The Monkees.
I didn't see this movie as a teenager; I was actually 30 the first time. In part, I like high school movies because they give me the school I would have liked to have (my school experience was closer to Welcome to the Dollhouse). The movie also gave me a revelation about my own tendency to see people (myself and others) as types; the movie let me, to some extent, let go of that. So my experience of the film is very personal. But watching it last week, decades later, afraid that it would turn out to be a dumb movie overinflated in my head, I was still impressed by what an amazing film this is.