Eat My Shorts

Rating: Null/10 (21 September 2010)

"You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions." – Brian ("The Breakfast Club")
In an Illinois high school, five dissimilar students are sentenced to spend a Saturday detention session together. In attendance are an "athlete" (Andrew), a "princess" (Clare), a "nerd" (Brian), a "criminal" (Bender), and an "artist" (Allison), titles which identify the roles the students play during the school week.
Of course, because of the various status levels and stereotypes associated with these roles, the five students initially want nothing to do with one other. It is only gradually, through conversation and self-disclosure, that they learn that they are more similar than different, each wrestling with alienation, self-acceptance, longing for parental approval and at the mercy of bullies and peer pressure. The film thus prescribes an "ideology of intimacy", in which acceptance and understanding is simply the result of "getting to know someone". It is from this process which the film's title is derived: though the film begins with the students all existing in separate "clubs" (science club, art club, sports club etc), they eventually learn to overcome their divisions and develop an all-inclusive group identity which they dub "The Breakfast Club."
Stylistically, the film is simple but affecting. Hughes likes uncluttered, stark compositions, well-lit modernist buildings, deadpan wide shots and the occasional musical montage. Mostly, though, this is filmed theatre, Hughes' visuals in service of his clever pen. Watch, for example, how Hughes' script flirts with our preconceptions: Bender strikes us as being a delinquent, and yet he not only leads the group but willingly sacrifices himself for the others. Then there's Andrew, who abandons his macho athlete role when he cries in front of the others, and the seemingly feeble Brian, who asks courageous questions and ends up sounding more secure and functional than his new detention friends. Likewise the two girls, Clare and Allison. Clare at first seems stuck up and conformist but reveals that she wishes she could be more free (and hits on bad boy Bender at the end of the film), while Allison, the artist figure, steps out of her silent, unsociable role to provide wise observations and uses lies and deviant behaviour to get others to confess or confront themselves.
Yes, the film is highly contrived, and there is a sense that the kid's are suffering from trite, even silly hang-ups. But kids are fragile creatures, are prone to self-centeredness, and the short time frame which the film spans demands that writer-director John Hughes insert some highly illogical dramaturgical fireworks to keep the plot moving. The result is a film which not only dives a little deeper into the teenage psyche than the "teen genre" typically delves, but manages to pull off a kind of poignant (but never sappy) emotional discharge quite alien to the genre, we the audience forced to watch as stereotypes dissolve and re-form before our eyes.
8.5/10 - One of the few "teen movies" (see Lumet's excellent "Running on Empty") which treats teenagers with dignity and not as a vehicle for sex jokes and gross-out gags. Like Hughes' "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", the film ends on a bittersweet note, lessons learnt destined to fade once the new school day dawns.
Worth multiple viewings.