The Breakfast Club

Rating: 8/10 (14 December 2010)

The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes, touches base on popular stereotypes that can be found in any typical American high school. The film follows five students of very different backgrounds on one day in detention. During a regular school day this particular group of teens would never be seen talking to each other or dare to associate with one another. When they see who they are "stuck with" for their detention, none of them are pleased, to say the least. The students are John Bender (Judd Nelson), Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez), Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald), Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) and Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall), who are the bad boy, the jock, the popular rich girl, the emo, and the nerd of the school. The teacher in charge of their detention is Mr. Vernon (Paul Gleason), who is also the principal of their school. The only thing that the students notice they share in common right away is their hatred for Mr. Vernon. Mr. Vernon assigns them to all write a paper about "Who you think you are". During the course of the detention and through actually speaking to one another, the students find out that the misconceptions they each had of one another were extremely wrong. I believe the Breakfast Club did a good job introducing all of the characters and began in the right direction allowing the viewer to see each of the students as the other students saw them. We as the audience were introduced to who they "really" were right along with the other class mates. John Hughes also did the movie Ferris Beulers Day Off. Both of these movies seem similar to me. In one movie it focuses on a larger group of teens and the differences they thought they had in turn to find out how similar they are. Ferris Buelers Day Off focuses more on one student, his sister, and one of his friends. Again there was a hatred for the principal by Ferris and his friend. Ferris' sister was the nerd sucking up to the principal trying to help him bust Ferris for skipping school. Ferris and his friend were the "bad boys" trying to have a day of fun by skipping school. I think the Breakfast Club was more of a drama for Hughes where Ferris Buelers Day Off was to be more comical. However both films focused on stereotypes of teens. Overall I really enjoyed this film and watching each of the characters take on the "real them". It shows how high school can really be for teens and how it is to be okay with displaying who you really are.