The Breakfast Club (1985)
Rated R
Score: 5 out of 5
If The Breakfast Club doesn't feel quite as fresh as it did thirty-five years ago, then that's probably because the world of teen movies since then is a world that it more or less created. In the mid-'80s, John Hughes had an astonishing run of not one, not two, but six of the most iconic teen movies of not only the decade but quite possibly of all time, all but two (Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful) of which he also directed in addition to writing. Many of the iconic characters and tropes of teen movies since, particularly those that can't be traced back to the raunchier sex comedies like Animal House or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, have their roots in his movies. Even though he went on to do plenty more in his long career, including legitimate classics like Home Alone and Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Hughes' name is still indelibly associated with a particular vision of middle-class suburban teenage life that he had defined so perfectly, just as Universal Pictures so perfectly defined the "classic" cinematic monsters in the 1930s. To this day, many teen movies and TV shows are still operating in the sandbox that Hughes created. And of his teen movies, while all of them are still fondly remembered (even if people have asked all sorts of uncomfortable questions about Long Duk Dong), The Breakfast Club stands as quite possibly his masterpiece. Even as its basic setup has become a stock plot for any number of teen shows and movies, there's still just something about it that makes it feel inventive, biting, and heartfelt to this day, on top of its killer soundtrack, great performances, and sharp sense of humor. Fundamentally a story about looking past stereotypes and images, there's a reason why this movie continues to resonate with every generation of teenagers that encounters it. I saw it this past Friday at a 35th anniversary screening courtesy of The Film Junkies, and it still blew me away, a film that makes you laugh your ass off in the moment but also leaves you with a lot to think about.
There really isn't much of a plot here beyond the basic premise: five students at Shermer High School are spending Saturday in detention in the school library, where the assistant principal Richard "Dick" Vernon requires them to each write a thousand-word essay in which they must describe who they think they are. Most of the stories riffing on this one often use this as the setup to an adventure, one where the students find out the library is haunted, where they get locked in after-hours, where one of them turns up dead and they have to figure out whodunit, where they find a treasure map in an old book, or something else strange and bizarre. Here, however, we get a simple character piece in which five teen movie archetypes interact with one another and reveal themselves to have a lot more going on than how they look and present themselves to the world, like a non-supernatural teen comedy version of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. Andrew Clark is on the school wrestling team, and got sent to detention for viciously bullying a smaller, weaker classmate in the locker room, behavior that he learned from his father, who had also been an athlete in high school. Claire Standish is a rich snob who brings a fancy lunch to detention, one whose mean-girl attitude covers up the fact that she's completely miserable. John Bender is a tough guy from the wrong side of the tracks who keeps weed in his locker, lives with an abusive father, and immediately starts acting like an asshole to the rest of the group; we can only imagine what in the hell he did to get sent to detention. We can ask the same question about Brian Johnson, an academic overachiever who, at first glance, seems like the last kid who'd ever get sent to detention. And finally, Allison Reynolds is an '80s Billie Eilish, a self-conscious weirdo who keeps to herself, dresses in black, and has a habit of stealing things.
As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that all of these kids, despite coming from very different cliques and walks of life, have very similar problems deep down. Andrew may be a jock and Brian a nerd, but they both have parents who are obsessed with their success to the point where they have been driven to the edge of madness by fear of failure. Bender may be poor and Claire may be rich, but they both feel that their life circumstances and their parents' abuse (physical for Bender, psychological for Claire) have molded them into terrible people. Brian and Claire may operate in different circles, but they're both deeply invested in school activities, the only difference being the arbitrary amount of prestige assigned to each of them. It's implied that, had Bender not grown up surrounded by awful people who taught him that violence was an acceptable solution, he might have turned out more like the other kids. Even Allison, who seems at first glance to be a dispassionate observer to the drama unfolding, turns out to be a bundle of neuroses in her own right. And of course, none of them feel that anybody truly understands them. Vernon certainly doesn't, and is happy to compare the Kids These Days unfavorably to his own generation, even though, as the janitor Carl quickly points out to him, they weren't all that different when they were in high school; all that's changed is that he grew more cynical as he climbed the ladder of his career. Even after thirty-five years, the basic message of this film is one that still resonates for people of every age watching it. For the kids, it shows them that they're not all that different past their appearances, and that they're not perfect people who have their lives all sorted out (and probably never truly will be). There's a touch of cynicism to it, as well, as Bender notes that their friendship likely won't outlast the detention period they're in; come Monday morning, they'll all be back in their cliques and barely speaking to one another. And for the adults watching, it's a reminder that they should never count out the next generation, no matter how different they may look and act at first glance. This is a lesson that the authority figure Vernon ultimately has to learn, as his differences with the five teenagers under his charge turn out to be a simple generation gap as he prefers to forget all the antics he got up to in high school.
These kids aren't perfect people. They can't be; if they were, they wouldn't be in detention. Bender and Andrew's arguments carry more than a whiff of homophobia as they hurl slurs at each other and question each other's sexuality. Bender spends a good chunk of the movie sexually harassing Claire (something that, as Molly Ringwald herself noted, makes him look even worse nowadays) and being a hateful bastard to everyone else. Brian is insufferably snobbish in a manner that makes him not all that different from the more outwardly elitist Claire, revealing that he took shop class because he (incorrectly) thought it was a cakewalk that "losers" like Bender took to inflate their grade point averages. Allison is desperate for attention and is willing to say and do anything to get it. The film's genius is that all of these characters, in their own ways, shine mirrors on the others' faults as human beings, being uniquely flawed in ways that complement each other's personalities and reveal themselves to have very similar roots to their problems. And most importantly, it's indicated that, even if they'll go back to their normal lives afterwards, they still grew as people by being forced out of their cliques and comfort zones that one Saturday in detention. Each of them learned something from one another, something that will allow them to enter adulthood better prepared to interact with others: namely, that, once you look past labels like "brain", "athlete", "basket case", "princess", and "criminal", we're not all that different.
That's not to say that these five kids blend into each other, though. There's a reason why Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy have all become inseparably associated with this movie in the popular memory, and that's because they did such a great job bringing Bender, Claire, Andrew, Brian, and Allison to life. Each of them starts out playing to their respective teen movie stereotype, and then spends the rest of the film chafing at all of the baggage that comes with that stereotype, and the cast all do a great job slowly peeling away the layers of their characters until, by the end, they have almost completely transformed. Nelson plays a great asshole as Bender, the one guy who you can understand Vernon being so abrasive to and someone who had me humming the tune to "Pumped Up Kicks" the moment he showed up in a trench coat and sunglasses, but also one who recognizes his problems and isn't afraid to call everyone else out for their bullshit too. Ringwald makes a great upper-class twit as Claire, one who we see can't take the cruelty she's surrounded with on a daily basis. Estevez's Andrew is someone who puts on the image of a "man's man" athlete, but is revealed to be deeply self-conscious about how others see him. Hall's Brian looks and acts like someone who, as Bender so vividly describes, belongs in the world of a saccharine '50s sitcom as the loving, hyper-achieving son, only for that mask to slip away and reveal a kid who's going mad under the pressure placed on him. And Sheedy's Allison initially gets some of the biggest laughs in the movie as the one who doesn't seem to care one bit what anybody thinks of her... only for it to become clear that most people wouldn't act in such an attention-grabbing way if they don't care what others think of them. And finally, Paul Gleason makes Vernon into a truly unlikable little dick who represents what, with the benefit of thirty-five years of hindsight, I'm certain at least one of the teenagers in that detention hall grew up into: somebody who had sold out all of the ideals of his youth to the point where he no longer honestly remembers that, during his childhood, he was just like these kids. There was never a moment in this film when these characters didn't have me captivated, and it was in no small part due to the excellent performances that the actors gave.
The other part of the alchemy that made this movie work so well is, of course, John Hughes at the peak of his talent. For a movie that takes place mostly in a single room, Hughes gave this an impeccable amount of style, from a quintessentially '80s soundtrack that always seems to know the right beats for the story to the manner in which it makes its setting feel like every memory that most viewers have had of high school, even if they weren't yet born when this first came out. It is still an exceptionally funny movie, too, with great gags ranging from a glass-shattering scream to a joke Bender told himself being interrupted in brutal fashion. Moments that could've turned very dark very quickly are instead given just the right amount of levity. There was one scene involving Bender and Claire that did cross the line for me, especially given that Ringwald was sixteen when it was shot, but one bad joke that had me going "dude, what the hell?" wasn't enough to detract from the rest of the mostly good-natured (if R-rated) humor on display here; Revenge of the Nerds this ain't. At his best, Hughes was a master at extracting big laughs from viewers, and both I and the crowd I saw it with laughed like hyenas throughout.
These kids aren't perfect people. They can't be; if they were, they wouldn't be in detention. Bender and Andrew's arguments carry more than a whiff of homophobia as they hurl slurs at each other and question each other's sexuality. Bender spends a good chunk of the movie sexually harassing Claire (something that, as Molly Ringwald herself noted, makes him look even worse nowadays) and being a hateful bastard to everyone else. Brian is insufferably snobbish in a manner that makes him not all that different from the more outwardly elitist Claire, revealing that he took shop class because he (incorrectly) thought it was a cakewalk that "losers" like Bender took to inflate their grade point averages. Allison is desperate for attention and is willing to say and do anything to get it. The film's genius is that all of these characters, in their own ways, shine mirrors on the others' faults as human beings, being uniquely flawed in ways that complement each other's personalities and reveal themselves to have very similar roots to their problems. And most importantly, it's indicated that, even if they'll go back to their normal lives afterwards, they still grew as people by being forced out of their cliques and comfort zones that one Saturday in detention. Each of them learned something from one another, something that will allow them to enter adulthood better prepared to interact with others: namely, that, once you look past labels like "brain", "athlete", "basket case", "princess", and "criminal", we're not all that different.
That's not to say that these five kids blend into each other, though. There's a reason why Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy have all become inseparably associated with this movie in the popular memory, and that's because they did such a great job bringing Bender, Claire, Andrew, Brian, and Allison to life. Each of them starts out playing to their respective teen movie stereotype, and then spends the rest of the film chafing at all of the baggage that comes with that stereotype, and the cast all do a great job slowly peeling away the layers of their characters until, by the end, they have almost completely transformed. Nelson plays a great asshole as Bender, the one guy who you can understand Vernon being so abrasive to and someone who had me humming the tune to "Pumped Up Kicks" the moment he showed up in a trench coat and sunglasses, but also one who recognizes his problems and isn't afraid to call everyone else out for their bullshit too. Ringwald makes a great upper-class twit as Claire, one who we see can't take the cruelty she's surrounded with on a daily basis. Estevez's Andrew is someone who puts on the image of a "man's man" athlete, but is revealed to be deeply self-conscious about how others see him. Hall's Brian looks and acts like someone who, as Bender so vividly describes, belongs in the world of a saccharine '50s sitcom as the loving, hyper-achieving son, only for that mask to slip away and reveal a kid who's going mad under the pressure placed on him. And Sheedy's Allison initially gets some of the biggest laughs in the movie as the one who doesn't seem to care one bit what anybody thinks of her... only for it to become clear that most people wouldn't act in such an attention-grabbing way if they don't care what others think of them. And finally, Paul Gleason makes Vernon into a truly unlikable little dick who represents what, with the benefit of thirty-five years of hindsight, I'm certain at least one of the teenagers in that detention hall grew up into: somebody who had sold out all of the ideals of his youth to the point where he no longer honestly remembers that, during his childhood, he was just like these kids. There was never a moment in this film when these characters didn't have me captivated, and it was in no small part due to the excellent performances that the actors gave.
The other part of the alchemy that made this movie work so well is, of course, John Hughes at the peak of his talent. For a movie that takes place mostly in a single room, Hughes gave this an impeccable amount of style, from a quintessentially '80s soundtrack that always seems to know the right beats for the story to the manner in which it makes its setting feel like every memory that most viewers have had of high school, even if they weren't yet born when this first came out. It is still an exceptionally funny movie, too, with great gags ranging from a glass-shattering scream to a joke Bender told himself being interrupted in brutal fashion. Moments that could've turned very dark very quickly are instead given just the right amount of levity. There was one scene involving Bender and Claire that did cross the line for me, especially given that Ringwald was sixteen when it was shot, but one bad joke that had me going "dude, what the hell?" wasn't enough to detract from the rest of the mostly good-natured (if R-rated) humor on display here; Revenge of the Nerds this ain't. At his best, Hughes was a master at extracting big laughs from viewers, and both I and the crowd I saw it with laughed like hyenas throughout.
The Bottom Line
The Breakfast Club earns its distinction as one of the greatest teen movies ever made for a damn good reason. Putting nostalgia aside, its messages about teenage life and growing up still strongly resonate and feel universal even in a time when it seems as though teenage life has changed dramatically. I agree with the various cast members who have said that they shouldn't remake this film: because, beyond the number of films that have been inspired by it, what could you possibly add to it?
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