The Breakfast Club




Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all.

Right after the success of Sixteen Candles John Hughes again wrote and directed a teen comedy, though of the four that he eventually did this was certainly the heaviest.

Five kids are stuck in detention on a Saturday morning under the harsh watch of their principal (Paul Gleason). As summed up in the essay they write, they're a complete representation of the different High School stereotypes. There's the mindless jock (Emilio Estevez), the preppy prom queen (Molly Ringwald), the brain named Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), the reclusive basket case (Ally Sheedy) and the troubled rebel (Judd Nelson).

So we start out with these blatant social castes, these kids who have never really talked to each other before. But as the day and the escapades wear on, they begin to open up to each other and discover that they share similar problems and aren't so different after all. It's a pretty routine revelation on paper, and looking back it's amazing to think how many things could've gone wrong. But fortunately this movie was all John Hughes, who was someone that profoundly understood the kids of that decade, and kids in general for that matter. Though less concerned with the comedy than the drama, it's nevertheless also hilarious in a brutally honest way and hosts more than a few classic lines.

The incredible script strikes more than a few chords on multiple levels. When asked to sum up the movie in one word, "realistic" kept popping up. Even in the middle of the lame lines (usually from the principal) it feels all too believable. Generally stuff like that can be accredited to bad writers, but here the characters are superbly written as they are added on to until the rigid borders they're designated in seem every bit insensitive as they are in real life. These are teenagers brought together towards a deeper understanding of themselves and each other through what starts out as a mundane detention.

The Breakfast Club wouldn't have ever made the cut, great writing and all, if the performances had been anything less. They nail their respective personalities so well that it's not difficult to imagine them that way in real life. All of them are brilliant, though the attention inexorably goes to the scene stealing Judd Nelson as the insightful delinquent.

It's a simple film, as it takes place exclusively around the school. However, in so many ways it rises above the limits it sets for itself and its characters, achieving something that few other teen movies can ever hope for.



-The Gnome