Enforced socialization

Rating: 9/10 (17 September 2013)

The 80s was the decade of the Brat Pack and the decade of John Hughes who did films that spoke to teens and 20 somethings of the era. His enduring classic was The Breakfast Club a character study of a cross section of teen America of the Reagan years.
In my childhood and adolescent years the culture had a great divide on what made the young tick. The model were shows like Leave It To Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. All the kids were wholesome and clean cut. The polar opposite was found on the big screen in Rebel Without A Cause and dozens of pale imitations of hot rodding kids. And the girls for the most part were just orbiting satellites around the males.
That's the most radical thing about The Breakfast Club I Found. The teen princess Molly Ringwald and the weird girl Ally Sheedy are most definitely not satellites around the males. Although Ringwald could have shown up on The Donna Reed Show she like the others is a complex character with her own issues regarding school and life. Sheedy was something unique, an oddball who not only doesn't fit in but regards that as a virtue. Not that people weren't like her in real life, but just not shown on the big screen or small.
The 'good' kids are jock Emilio Estevez and overachiever scholar Anthony Michael Hall. Superficially both of those could be Donna Reed or Brady Bunch characters. What's revealed is both are just trying to fit into their assigned niches in life and both question why is there so much pressure to succeed. One has suicidal intentions because of it.
Judd Nelson is your James Dean character, good but truly the least original of all the charter members of The Breakfast Club. He could truly have been part of the motorcycle clique that Dean belonged to in Rebel Without A Cause. Dean himself bared his soul, Nelson took a bit longer to do it on the screen. For him and Sheedy detention is just part of the day. The other three are new to it and in the normal course of school day they would not be caught dead associating with these two or in fact each other. They all have their cliques except Sheedy who is a total loner. In the end they find they have a lot of the same issues and anxieties. Detention enforced socialization on them.
Paul Gleason plays the school principal and in his career he took out a patent on these authority figures who are so alien to the kids. He did the part of the principal in so many films and TV shows his appearance almost became expected like Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers comedy. The Breakfast Club became his signature part.
The Breakfast Club is a true classic, long and deep on character almost like a Eugene O'Neil play.