The teenage struggles of growing up

Rating: 6/10 (15 June 2011)

The movie, The Breakfast Club, is a movie about five high school students, from totally different social backgrounds, forced to spend a Saturday together in detention. At the start of the detention they dislike each other and argue. They felt they had nothing in common but once they begin to open up to each other that changes. There are a couple of themes in this movie. One is the stereotyping of the usual cliques or social groups that exist in high school, the jock, the hood, the nerd, the weirdo and the homecoming queen. Another theme in the movie is the struggles that teenagers face as they try break away from their parents' control to gain their independence. Two other movies with similar themes about teenagers dealing with the struggles growing up are The Wonder Years and American Teen. Bender (Judd Nelson) the "criminal," is just an all around hood who is a regular attendee of the Saturday detention. He is in detention because he pulled the fire drill. Andy (Emilio Estevez) the "athlete," is in detention because he wanted to break away from the straight and narrow and do something bad just once. He taped together the buns of a fellow student. Claire (Molly Ringwald) the princess is a little rich girl who gets everything she wants. She is in detention because she skipped school to go shopping. Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) the brain is in detention because he brought a flair gun to school and it went off in his locker. Allison (Ally Sheedy) the basket case came to detention because she had nothing better to do. While in detention they begin to bond. Their first bonding moment happens when Bender removes a screw from the detention room door and the door no longer will stayed opened. The principal walks into the room and wants to know which one of them removed the screw but no one admits to knowing. Another bonding moment comes when they are sitting around after smoking pot. This is where they begin to open up and tell each other about their home lives. Bender grew up in an abusive home with alcoholic parents. Andrew is consistently being hounded by his father to always win and not to do anything bad that will ruin his chances of getting an athletic scholarship. Claire feels that her parents do not care about her and use her just to get back at each other. Brian is pressured by his parents to always excel academically. Allison says her home life is unsatisfactory because her parents ignore her. The camera angles used during the scene where they begin to open up to each other had close ups of each of their faces as they each talked about their home life. Viewers could see their eyes well up with tears as they talked about how sad they were about the relationships they had with their parents. Motifs which are repetitive images, patterns or ideas that relate to the theme existed throughout different scenes in The Breakfast Club. Motifs were show through the many stereotypical social group conflicts that occurred between the criminal, the athlete, the princess, the brain and the basket case. Although all five came from different social background but they still had a connection.