Joy of Freedom

Rating: 9/10 (15 July 2012)

I was dilly-dallying for quite a long time in watching this iconic John Hughes film of the eighties. I should not have done that. It's not like we haven't seen this kind of coming of age films, but still this movie is one of the best in that category mainly due to the character development that we hardly see in coming of age teen dramas.
The movie starts with a fine Saturday, when five high school students were forced to be in the school as detention. The first impression when I watched the first 10-15 minutes, I thought this could be the '12 Angry Men' of High School movies, at least thematically. It didn't disappoint me and that's saying a lot. Really, a lot.
These five kids are quite different from each other, and they were proud of it. But as they began to talk amongst themselves(of course conflict arose at first) slowly, predictably but pleasantly they began to open up; and then we could very well relate to the characters. Each of those kids may be from a different background, from a different class of society, but there is that feeling of hard done-by that is common between all of them. That is where John Hughes was efficacious with this film.
The characters are wisely chosen too. A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal; the movie was able to do what it was intended to do because of these polarising characters. The performances of the actors in these characters are also one of the primary reasons of the success of the movie. The young actors, members of the core group of the 'Brat Pack' of the eighties did exceptionally well in depicting the varying range of emotions in their characters. Judd Nelson, especially, as the outcast tough-guy John Bender, managed to sway between being cool and also emotionally vulnerable deftly.
All in all, this movie may not be a classic in terms of technical aspects but it has the heart in it that one cannot help but feel a whooping sensation when John Bender punches the air in that iconic end scene. The excitation of freedom, one may call it.
P.S. Eightees' music was really cool.