John Hughes' The Breakfast Club is mellow but memorable

Rating: 8/10 (19 February 2013)

America's 1980s film scene witnessed the teenage comedy fever spread faster than the plague, each director fighting to find the new best cure; and when America asked for a miracle doctor, John Hughes was there with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and possibly the most memorable teen comedy of all with the birth of the 'Brat pack', The Breakfast Club. In his 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, John Hughes uses a humdrum plot as a backdrop for the most memorable character development and enduring life lessons in cinematic history.
I remember once someone explaining to me that "The Breakfast Club is one of those movies where nothing really happens, but somehow at the end, everything is different". The film begins with a collection of stereotyped teenagers sharing a Saturday in detention at their suburban Chicago high school. Though the kids find ways to break as many of Principal Vernon's rules as possible, nothing else really happens.
Still, it's hard to walk away from this film without feeling the emotional change the five main characters (labeled throughout the movie as the brain, the princess, the athlete, the criminal and the basket case), experience by prodding at each others' personal lives and stumbling upon surprising similarities. From the start, Bender (actor Judd Nelson) plays the criminal, antagonizing his co-stars with mean jabs and persuading them to join him in outlandish misbehaviors. Several times throughout the movie, Bender and his detention mates: Brian the brain (Anthony Michael Hall), Claire the princess (Molly Ringwald), Andrew the athlete (Emilio Estevez) and Allison the basket case (Ally Sheedy), take turns in shouting matches and conflict ridden discussion only to find that they come from similar backgrounds and situations. Hughes' intense emotional scenes engage the audience and encourage a reconsideration of how we view those around us.
The Breakfast Club is a gripping insight on high school stereotypes and how the expectations and pressure from the outside world can keep one from being who they really want to be. "I hate it. I hate having to go along with everything my friends say," Claire, the princess, declares after the group discusses how everything will just go back to normal on Monday. But by the end of the day, Hughes has used everything from new relationships to the students' clothing to show how the group has broken the stereotypes they held in the morning when they walked into detention.
Unlike many teen comedies of the decade, The Breakfast Club takes no risks with an ambitious plot. However, such a basic plot line is the perfect setting for the strong development undergone by these not-so-basic teenage characters, who find comfort in crossing the lines that have been drawn for them. John Hughes finds huge success in this 'Brat Pack' classic whose lessons are still relevant more than two decades later.