The Breakfast Club (1985) * * *

 

Directed by:  John Hughes

Starring:  Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Paul Gleason, John Kapelos

The Breakfast Club represents a touchstone in teen comedies.   The 80's were chock full of them, with varying degrees of realism and sympathy for the plights of their teen characters.   Some were meant to be naughty sex romps while others like The Breakfast Club actually delved into the psyches of American teenagers.   The movie argues that maybe we can all get along if we took the time to relate to one another.   Or at least teenagers would.

The Breakfast Club takes five teens, each a certain "type", and throws them all together for Saturday detention at their high school.   We have the jock Andrew (Estevez), the troublemaker John Bender (Nelson), the strange Allison (Sheedy), Miss Popularity Claire (Ringwald), and the brainy Brian (Hall) all serving detention for various reasons, but they are all there wasting a precious Saturday.   Keeping an eye on the teens is Richard Vernon (Gleason), who seems just as pissed to be spending a Saturday at school as the students he is monitoring.   Richard laments what today's teenagers have become.   Carl, the school janitor (Kapelos) disagrees: "The kids haven't changed, you have."   Richard sounds like the mean old fart teenagers swear they will never become, until one day they magically transform into a Richard.

The students with nothing in common don't say much to each other at first.   They hope to pass the time by sitting silently and staring straight ahead, but to alleviate the boredom, they begin communicating first by antagonizing each other, settle into a guarded truce, and then open up to each other.  As was custom in order to bond in many 80's comedies, weed is introduced to break down the walls.   It is here where the group is at its most honest while the movie itself is at its least realistic.   Richard doesn't hear the radio blasting, glass shattering, or smell the weed?   

The actors in The Breakfast Club all possess innate intelligence and likability.   They take archetypes and turn them into individuals.   I was always perplexed at how they all spoke with such perfect grammar and elocution, but with that quibble aside, the students are able to engage us.   Writer-director Hughes was able to write characters who have built-in empathy and understanding of others.   Many people may not have such traits, but Hughes wishes they had.   It would make communication a whole lot easier.

I can't help but think of The Breakfast Club without also referencing a recent Bill Maher editorial discussing Molly Ringwald writing an article about revisiting her old movies and discovering how they could be viewed through a less-flattering lens in the age of #MeToo.  Maher decries this as a "woke" thing, but I'm not so sure.   I think it may be a truth that as a younger person, you behaved in ways or believed in things which would make you cringe today.   In other ways, you were once a John Bender and now you've turned into a Richard.