04/03/10 - The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club (1985, 97 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/

As I begin to look back on my college career, movies like The Breakfast Club call out to me for rewatches. I checked this out last year before I started keeping this blog, but the "aura" of The Breakfast Club made me want to check it out again.

The film is about the Saturday morning detention of a group of completely unrelated characters. They are: the jock Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez), the nerd Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall), the criminal John Bender (Judd Nelson), the princess Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald), and the basket case Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy). In charge of the detention is Principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason).

It's hard to not regard The Breakfast Club as the quintessential teen movie. That doesn't mean it's the best by a long shot, but it's hard to not say it captures a feeling that no other teen movie captures. I believe this is due to the characters. Director John Hughes takes a bunch of flat characters (a jock, a nerd, etc.) and makes them real. Andrew isn't just a sport and Claire isn't just a school princess. It's impossible to not relate in some way to some character in The Breakfast Club. The same quality that all the characters seem to have is the hatred of their home life. In this comes one of the most memorable lines of the teen genre when Allison talks about our hearts dying when we grow old. When asked "Who cares?" by Bender she responds with a very emotional "I care." It's a line like this between the characters that cements this motley group as making up the quintessential teen movie.

The Breakfast Club also has one of the most well done scenes in cinema as well. The scene I'm speaking of is near the end when the entire group is just sitting down and chatting. In this scene everyone mentions why they were forced to detention. But besides that, the characters here become completely real. I don't feel like I'm watching a movie anymore. I feel like I'm flashing back to high school and sitting in on a session where we all say how we're feeling. I mean, I never took part in something like what goes on in this scene but I sure did feel some of the emotions mentioned and I figure most of my classmates felt the same way. There's a certain chill that comes over me when I know I'm watching a really really well done scene and that's what occurs when this scene is playing. And somehow, adding to all this, is that the scene is ad-libbed. I just can't fathom this fact. But maybe it's this completely natural quality that the characters bring to the scene that makes it so great.

And now for the one of the characters themselves. The character I feel is most worthy of an entire paragraph is Bender. Bender is a hard character to really like and a hard character to really hate. I alternate between both ends of the spectrum as the movie plays out. What I think is great about Bender is how he forces everyone to come out of their shells and actually talk to each other. Similarly, when he sacrifices himself to help the entire group he gets major props in my book. However, just with these positives there's negatives. He never lets his hating persona go and frequently slips into it in the latter stages of the movie. However, during the long scene mentioned above, he is frequently quiet, seemingly reflecting in the quiet on his own life. I like to imagine he's realizing how much he actually has in common with the rest of the group. Bender is the most memorable character and not just because he has the most lines and talks the most but because (to me) he seems to be honest in everything he says.

The rest of the characters aren't nearly as great as Bender but are all cool in their own ways. Really, though, we see the true nature of each character in the previously mentioned amazing scene. Here, their real qualities are highlighted and they are each given free reign to be natural. Andrew is a jock with pent up hatred for what he has become, Brian is a nerd who is frustrated by failure, Claire is the princess who has built up too much pressure on her social life, and Allison is the basket case who hides herself.

The only real thing I hate about The Breakfast Club is the ending for Allison. Once Claire "makes her beautiful" I get the impression it goes against one of the themes of the movie in the importance of each of us being who we are. Is Allison becoming who she really is and conquering the fear of hiding? Or is Allison just being suckered into Claire's social hierarchy? It's hard for me to make up my mind on this issue after only two views but I lean more towards the latter. It hurts the end product, however, in thinking this way, but it's my opinion of what happens.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. The Breakfast Club is sure great a lot of times but I just don't feel it's worthy of an 8/10. I feel that the Allison point mentioned above really hurts the entire film. A lot. I can't convince myself the point being made is the other one though so until then, I have to keep this at a 7/10.