Full Review: The Breakfast Club (1985)

People in the Movie:  Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez

Director:  John Hughes

Pigeonhole:  Drama/ Comedy

The Basics: Five high school students spend a Saturday in detention, and although they are from different social cliques, the invisible boundaries break down this day.  Each one of them realizes the others go beyond his and her surface stereotypes and the pre-conceived notions each may have previously held. 

Recommendation:  Growing up in the 80’s and having seen this movie more times than I can remember, might lead me to have a slightly higher opinion of this movie than it deserves, but I highly recommend it.   The ‘R’ rating is for language, and drug use.

My Take: **spoiler alert** Hall, Ringwald, Nelson, Sheedy, and Estevez come together at 7am on a random Saturday morning for detention for various transgressions, which are revealed throughout the film.  They are labeled with some favorite high school descriptors as; a brain (Hall), an athlete (Estevez), a basket-case (Sheedy), a princess (Ringwald), and a criminal (Nelson).  Interestingly, we see through the progression of the film that while the labels seem to pigeon-hole each one, at the very beginning, that each of them comes to almost embrace this label, making him or her unique.  

The chatter is light at first, mostly Bender (Nelson) slinging insults, and the others reacting.   But gradually more and more secrets and truths are revealed about each of their respective lives, with some laughs and some tears, and some pot smoking.

Paul Gleason plays the principal, Richard Vernon, who we see is burned out, and at one point almost willing to become physically violent with Bender.   Gleason played a good role, the adult who almost despises the generational gap, or at least his ability to accept it.   John Kapelos plays Carl the janitor, who is the self-purported “eyes and ears” of the school.

The biggest question that is verbalized in the movie is, despite the fact these 5 seemingly different students became “friends” this Saturday would they still be friends on Monday morning?  Or would the social barriers, expectations, and peer pressure lead one back to where he or she started?

Final Thought/Extras/For Fun:  I relate to (and enjoy) this movie because I knew kids who shared similarities to the 5, and still see some similarities to my own high school years… The Simple Minds song “Don’t You Forget About Me” will forever be linked to this movie…  While I do not normally do this, you should check this out from IMDb, it is deleted/cut scenes (about 2/3 of the way down the page) since they are not likely to ever appear on a DVD version:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/trivia