THE BREAKFAST CLUB. (1985) WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND CO-PRODUCED BY JOHN HUGHES.
STARRING MOLLY RINGWALD, EMILIO ESTEVEZ, JUDD NELSON, ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL, ALLY SHEEDY, JOHN KAPELOS AND PAUL GLEASON.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I bloody love this film, the quintessential ‘Eighties film no matter which way you look at it. It’s directed by the same guy who did SIXTEEN CANDLES, WEIRD SCIENCE, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, PRETTY IN PINK, UNCLE BUCK, HOME ALONE, BEETHOVEN and BABY’S DAY OUT, so you can see that it was in safe hands, the hands of a master craftsman of the American teen comedy genre.
It’s the story of five disparate individuals who, much to their disgust, get called into their high school by their headmaster for an all-day detention on a Saturday, of all days.
They are highly suspicious, dismissive and even contemptuous of each other at first, because they each fall into different ‘categories’ of American high school-goer that don’t often mix or gel with each other, namely, the princess, the athlete, the brainiac, the social recluse and the rebellious bad boy-slash-criminal.
But, by the end of the long, often trying day, the five end up coming together and discovering that they have a lot more in common with each other than they could ever have imagined.
They’ve learned a lot about themselves and about each other over the course of this day, and, going forward, what they’ve learned might just help them to feel a little more compassion for their fellow students whom, in the past, they might have simply dismissed as not being relevant to them and their lives.
All five actors and actresses belong to a group that, in ‘Eighties film-making terms, was known as the ‘Brat Pack,’ a group that also included the likes of Rob Lowe and Demi Moore. My favourite Brat-Packer is Molly Ringwald; I’ve just always liked her for some reason. I loved her in the Stephen King mini-series, THE STAND, as well.
Here, she plays Claire Standish, the ‘princess.’ She’s rich, pretty and popular, so how could she possibly have any problems or underlying worries? You’d be surprised. I love when she takes out her lunch at lunch-time and reveals it to be a beautifully packed and presented sushi dish, complete with chopsticks…!
When Judd Nelson as angry rebel and loner John Bender asks her what it is, she looks at him as if he must have been living under a rock not to have heard of sushi. She’s such a privileged girl…! Bender, of course, has no lunch, as he comes from a violent, abusive and neglectful home, the kind of trailer trash set-up you might see in an Eminem video.
This goes some way to explaining why he has such a massive chip on his shoulder and why he rails against authority at every opportunity. He and the Vice-Principal of Shermer High, Mr. Vernon, go at each other hammer and tongs, because Vernon gets his kicks out of domineering over the kids in his care. It makes him feel like a big man, helps him to forget his frustrations about how his own life has turned out.
Bender is like a mixture of bad boy Bart Simpson and school bully Nelson Muntz from THE SIMPSONS, and Vernon makes an ideal Principal Seymour Skinner, who can’t bear to have his feeble authority questioned or his prissy Sunday school sensibilities affronted.
There’s one scene in which Vernon keeps assigning Bender detention on top of detention, for his mouthy inability to shut his trap when it matters, that could have come straight from THE SIMPSONS. Bender even says ‘Eat my shorts’ at some stage, and when he turns his attentions to prom queen-in-waiting, Claire, it’s like the time good girl Lisa Simpson has a crush on bad boy Nelson Muntz.
The handsome Emilio Estevez as Andrew Clark, the athlete or ‘jock,’ rubs Bender up the wrong way because they’re both alpha males. Andrew is ashamed of the reason he’s here in Saturday detention, maybe because he’s a better man than his dad, whose motto, ‘winning is everything,’ is ruining Andrew’s life.
Anthony Michael Hall as nerdy virgin Brian Johnson has another incredibly sad reason for being here in detention. If Vice-Principal Vernon had dug a little deeper into the flare gun business, instead of just laying down the law as usual, he might actually have been able to help a kid in his care for once, and earn those $31,000 buckaroonies a year…!
Ally Sheedy plays friendless goth recluse Allison Reynolds, a girl whose reason for being in Saturday detention is perhaps the saddest of all. Who is she really? Slutty nymphomaniac? Compulsive liar? Or just a girl who desperately needs a friend?
Will the Shermer Five discover that it’s actually peer pressure and parental pressures that are the real enemies here, and not each other? Will Cupid’s arrow land anywhere significant? Will Bender do his nine or ten extra detentions? Who will pay for the damage he does to the vent and various other parts of the school he’s ruined? God knows. Don’t worry about it. Just sit back and enjoy a delicious slice of nostalgia served piping hot with a side-order of comedy.
sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 