The good times...

Rating: 10/10 (31 March 2005)

I was not quite thrilled with this movie when I saw it back in 1997---but being in 9th grade, I didn't quite get it so much as I do now.
A crew of High Schoolers is put in detention on a Saturday for various "mis-doings" during the course of their day at school, therefore, they are punished with Saturday detention (which actually was never done in my school, but I also wasn't in High School in the eighties). There you have the Jock, The "hood", The "Princess", the "nut", and the "Brain" trapped with their "fire breathing dragon" of a principal.
The thing that I really loved was how they all start off showing the closed mindedness of each student towards the other and all the assumptions they made and then lead into the whole "We stick together" thing. They all make inaccurate assumptions about each other and then really understand that the lines placed on students and cliques is all man made and they cross those lines and blur them. In the end, two of the guys and both girls get involved with each other (and the total opposite of each other ends up together) and the "brain" stays smart and stays single! More of a "coming of age" thing but a "go against the standards and rulings of peers" thing! The best performance was by Judd Nelson, playing John Bender. Anyone else would not have fit the part as well as he did, I don't care who it is. I believe that the part was made for him and only he could pull it off so well and Molly Ringwald's performance in their "tension" scenes and argument scenes was amazing---they played off of each other's energy and emotion and took it further. Also noteworthy is Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Emilio Estevez---all 5 played well off of each other and fed off of each other to carry the movie the way it went. The script was well written, but if the acting was no good, even the best script can go bad. Paul Gleason was also excellent in his role and his reactions and "sternness" really set a great tone, especially with his anger toward John Bender.
Well done, a great classic, 10/10