The Quintessential Film of the 1980s

Rating: 8/10 (16 July 2013)

Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought.
Typically when you have this sort of plot, it is going to fail miserably because it is so contrived and stretches the bounds of the imagination. I mean, really, even if these kids had detention together, would they strike up a conversation or just sit silently for eight hours?
But in the 1980s and in the hands of John Hughes, it works. This film, more than any other, defined the 1980s for a generation and really crystallized what it meant to be in the Brat Pack. Sure, we might not say all these people are in the BP and not all the BP is in this movie (it is a a very fluid, malleable category), but this is a must-see and one that most of us can watch again and again.
And of John Hughes' films, only one ("Ferris Bueller's Day Off") has debatably had a longer-lasting impact.