Saturday morning detention was never this funny, moving, or heartfelt

Rating: 10/10 (27 February 2009)

"The Breakfast Club" is arguably the best movie ever made about teenagers that it's no wonder that it's such an essential piece of 1980s teen fanfare/nostalgia. This movie is all of funny (sometimes hilariously so), moving, and heartfelt. The most authentic thing about this film is that regardless of the blatant stereotyping of high school cliques (honestly, not a whole lot has changed since 1985) and melodrama, this movie pulls at the heart-strings in ways you never would have thought were possible for a film such as this. And this heart-string-pulling is sincere and honest, making my assertion that it's authentic correct.
For early Saturday morning detention, five suburban Chicago high school students have showed up as punishment, with Principal Richard Vernon (the late Paul Gleason) presiding over the festivities. They've all done something to land here this morning, and they each represent the various cliques in their school: Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez) is the stereotypical jock, Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald) is the stereotypical beauty/princess, Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) is the stereotypical nerd/brain, Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) is the stereotypical shy-quiet girl/weirdo/outsider, and John Bender (Judd Nelson) is the stereotypical rebel. As an aside, when I was in high school, I fell into three of the five categories here: nerd/brain, shy-quiet guy/weirdo/outsider, and rebel - in that order.
As I said before, they all have their reasons for being there, and on another day in another world they would have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But this is not the normal world. This is writer-director John Hughes's teen world, and in his teen world, anything goes. Of course these kids don't like each other; Hughes makes sure of that, but as the day goes on, barriers are broken, alliances are made, and each of these kids discovers that they have more in common with each other than they think - of course after having gone through a lot of pain to get there. They have sincere heart-to-hearts with each other that are not like anything seen in another film of this genre. Spliced in with the drama, Hughes's flawless screen-writing does give these kids some time to have some fun and stave off the boredom and mess with Vernon, with well-placed scenes of comedy, even slapstick comedy, that get as much laughs from the comedy as the tears we shed from the heart-string drama.
"The Breakfast Club" is a first-rate teen comedy/drama with some first-rate performances from some of the top "Brat Packers" from the time. Estevez, Ringwald, Hall, Sheedy, and Nelson are a brave, once-in-a-lifetime cast that do their characters plenty of justice. These kids may be stereotypes, but they're three-dimensional stereotypes, and real people with real feelings and real troubles. (These former Brat Packers, now fully-grown adults, would reunite 20 years later at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards to receive a special honor.)
John Hughes never quite repeated the success of "The Breakfast Club," and his career began to decline toward the '80s and into the '90s. But "The Breakfast Club" is unquestionably Hughes's masterstroke of teen comedy/drama. He was able to give teenagers a three-dimensional gloss and show us that these teens are indeed real people with real feelings and real troubles.
Saturday morning detention was never this fun.
10/10