I was born in 1982, but it's not before a faithful holiday night of 1991 where I was mistakenly left in front of RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD 2 with the boy who would grow up to become iconic club scene performer Tiger Billy, that I felt the transcendent power of cocaine age cinema. So believe it or not, I hadn't seen 1980s cult hit THE BREAKFAST CLUB until last weekend. I can't say the title has any particular appeal to me. The poster looks like an image that's been collecting dust on the wall of a deserted video store. The synopsis isn't intriguing or engaging either. So what the fuck, right?
How did this movie beat father time when bigger productions crashed and burned in movie oblivions in the 1990s? Truth to be told, THE BREAKFAST CLUB is like a secret handshake, an unspoken understanding between nostalgic children of the 80s. It's something you treasure if you had the chance to see it, because it's a movie that's both universal and intimate. It's the conundrum of existence narrowed down to that one institution that binds us all: high school.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB stems from a simple idea: 5 teenagers have to spend their Saturday on detention. There is Andrew (Emilio Estevez), the jock; Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), the nerd; Bender (Judd Nelson), the brooding criminal; Claire (Molly Ringwald), the prom queen and Allison (Ally Sheedy), the basket case. Confronted to authority, themselves and Bender's burning desire for something interesting to happen, the kids are going to spend the day in a suspended reality where they are all equals. They are going to realize that they aren't all that different. They all have to face their future and they're all scared shitless of the unknown.
The characters of THE BREAKFAST CLUB are not really characters. At least, they don't start as such in the first couple scenes of the movie. They are social archetypes of what you usually find in a high school, or maybe archetypes that one expects to find in any given high schools. This was a deliberate decision from director and screenwriter John Hughes, who picked it up from that premise and rammed social constructions into one another until there was nothing left. The criminal picks the prom queen apart, who gets picked apart the jock, who gets picked apart by the nerd, you see the dynamics here. THE BREAKFAST CLUB is relying 100% on John Hughes' ability to write killer dialogue lines on the people's burning desire to tell archetype X what they really felt about them in high school. It's also why it's successful.
How did this movie beat father time when bigger productions crashed and burned in movie oblivions in the 1990s? Truth to be told, THE BREAKFAST CLUB is like a secret handshake, an unspoken understanding between nostalgic children of the 80s. It's something you treasure if you had the chance to see it, because it's a movie that's both universal and intimate. It's the conundrum of existence narrowed down to that one institution that binds us all: high school.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB stems from a simple idea: 5 teenagers have to spend their Saturday on detention. There is Andrew (Emilio Estevez), the jock; Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), the nerd; Bender (Judd Nelson), the brooding criminal; Claire (Molly Ringwald), the prom queen and Allison (Ally Sheedy), the basket case. Confronted to authority, themselves and Bender's burning desire for something interesting to happen, the kids are going to spend the day in a suspended reality where they are all equals. They are going to realize that they aren't all that different. They all have to face their future and they're all scared shitless of the unknown.
The characters of THE BREAKFAST CLUB are not really characters. At least, they don't start as such in the first couple scenes of the movie. They are social archetypes of what you usually find in a high school, or maybe archetypes that one expects to find in any given high schools. This was a deliberate decision from director and screenwriter John Hughes, who picked it up from that premise and rammed social constructions into one another until there was nothing left. The criminal picks the prom queen apart, who gets picked apart the jock, who gets picked apart by the nerd, you see the dynamics here. THE BREAKFAST CLUB is relying 100% on John Hughes' ability to write killer dialogue lines on the people's burning desire to tell archetype X what they really felt about them in high school. It's also why it's successful.
Tipper Gore's worst nightmare.
There is this amazing scene in THE BREAKFAST CLUB where the kids are smoking a J together in the library in a bonding gesture meant to kill time. It's a scene that would be harmless enough today, but marijuana imbues Emilio Estevez' character with a jolt of unexplainable energy and he starts doing cartwheels all over the place for no visible reason. It's kind of awesome, but where do this scene comes from? I mean, it would obviously not happen in real life and the effects of weed have been documented enough for this kind of scene to be just a fortunate incident. What makes it fascinating to me is that I don't know which way John Hughes was leaning: was he a paranoid conservative or was he a leftist with a sense of humor? Conventional wisdom would say the latter, but I'm afraid that verifying would kill the magic of this wonderful scene.
I don't have any nostalgia towards THE BREAKFAST CLUB and/or high school, but I can confirm you that it's a tremendous movie. Its approach is very minimalistic and it could very well be adapted to a stage play, yet it would work under any form because great, clever writing will suck you in no matter what. THE BREAKFAST CLUB mirrors everybody's experience of high school through its usage of archetype and yet doesn't judge. There are no good guys, there are no bad guys, it's just an increasingly complicated portrait of a youth that's terrified to turn into their parents. THE BREAKFAST CLUB is brilliant film that exposes universal questions that every blossoming eventually stumbles upon and that proposes a solution abstract and open-ended enough to leave the viewer feeling empowered about his own future.
I'm not sure if there is anything in their review to convince you to watch THE BREAKFAST CLUB, it sure took me several years to do so, but just watch it to kill time. It's on Netflix anyway. You can thank me later.
I'm not sure if there is anything in their review to convince you to watch THE BREAKFAST CLUB, it sure took me several years to do so, but just watch it to kill time. It's on Netflix anyway. You can thank me later.