An absorbing film that still resonates today, but only for those who were there...

Rating: Null/10 (6 April 2001)

A chilly Saturday morning at a suburban Chicago high school. Five students from different social groups spend a day of detention together. Over the course of 8 hours, they learn about each other, themselves, and life. This film, lumped into the maliciously titled "Brat Pack" genre of movies, exceeds far beyond the expendable category it's been branded into. It is an uncommonly moving film about the hardships of growing up, but where it differs from other coming-of-age/slice-of-life stories is that the film has NOTHING to do with adults, including an adult's perception on the problems that these five characters confront, avoid and examine in "The Breakfast Club". It is a film for teenagers, written & directed by John Hughes, who clearly never lost touch of the teenage heart that still beats inside him. It's possible that if you don't get this film, it may simply be because you are now an ADULT, an adult who forgot what high school was like. John Hughes is talking to kids in this film, it isn't a story that's going to stir emotion in middle-aged film critics and suburban professionals. He communicates the problems of teenagers with an almost meditative pace that employs a heavy amount of dialogue and little music or fanciful editing. Hughes does a fine job of injecting comedic touches into this drama without ever sacrificing its overall somber tone.
In retrospect, the film vaguely solicits sympathy for the teenager growing up in Reagan-era America, where children are dealing with a sudden, yuppie-corporate world that stole away their baby boomer parents who were only too happy to trade in their disco balls & hippie beads for foreign cars & pasta machines. These are children of parents who simply don't care (Allison and John), of parents who are too busy making money (Claire) or of parents who funnel all their failed ambitions into their overachieving children (Andy and Brian). Sure, Andy, Claire and Brian are easily identifiable characters, while John and Allison hint at many more layers existing beneath their surface, but they collectively present the different faces of adolescence.
Many detractors of "The Breakfast Club" complain about its sentimentality and lack of insight. What are these movie lovers expecting, these characters are teenagers! They don't have the experience yet to make bold, all-encompassing musings on the hardships of adult life. They are your typically angry, impatient, confused kids, yet they are still unusually aware of themselves. They are trying to make sense of a time in their life where society begins to assign them many of the responsibilities of adulthood but few of the privileges (which is why teenagers will always be seeking out late nights of sex & alcohol). It's funny how people regard this film as a great "80's" movie because it implies how many people think what a culturally bankrupt decade it was, probably the tackiest in 20th century America (sorry, it wasn't the 70's, at least that decade had Martin Scorsese, Marvin Gaye and Led Zeppelin). Further irony is apparent considering this film isn't as dated-looking as many other films of that decade. Sure, the two dancing scenes and brief bits of the synthesizer-laden film score are cheesy, not to mention the fact that these kids nowadays would be under much more duress. Claire (the rich princess) would have some sort of eating disorder, Andy (the athlete) would have date-raped somebody, Allison (the goth introvert) would have a severe psychological disorder, the kind where you see her in the school cafeteria scratching her wrists and incessantly mumbling to herself. John (the stoner rebel) would have dropped out already, gotten someone pregnant, and be relegated to bagging groceries or fixing cars. As for Brian (the nerdy brain), it's quite obvious he's the one who will arrive at school one morning with a firearm and shoot his classmates (Hughes prophetically hints at this, more than a decade before it would come to fruition).
The performances are all-around perfect and very understated, including Ally Sheedy as Allison, the "basketcase" who skillfully played an introvert without being boring. Over the course of the film, Hughes very slowly peels away as Ally's layers, although by the end we still don't really know her too well or where she will end up. Only Judd Nelson, as the infamous trash-talking John Bender, really goes appropriately overboard. Hughes has this character chewing the scenery almost every chance he gets. Nelson is a quick actor when it comes to being confrontational, especially the "seated circle" scene where he berates Molly Ringwald for lacking the courage to judge people by character instead of appearance - wow, is he good there. You've got to accept that films like "Gandhi" and "Out Of Africa" are NOT going to be revered as epics of their era. It's "The Breakfast Club" that will be remembered because it defined its time so thoughtfully, and it has held up considerably well given the era it was filmed in. Like it or not, it's a modern classic.