Lucas
Versantvoort / 21 September 2014
Ahh, The Breakfast Club. As I’m sure many
will agree, watching this in your teens is a pretty interesting experience as few
films you watch then deal with high school life and all its pressures with
a lot of empathy. Because I saw it as a teen and liked it, I have a lot of
strong, positive feelings toward it. Though as time goes on and because of the
generational gap, you start to dislike certain things with some scenes becoming
pretty cringe worthy. But it probably resides at the top of the mountain of
films in this particular genre.
Right off the bat, we’re introduced
to our merry band of misfits: Andrew (Emilio Estevez), the athlete; Brian (Anthony
Michael Hall), the brain; Claire, the princess (Molly Ringwald); Bender (Judd
Nelson), the criminal and Allison (Ally Sheedy), the basket case. They have
only one thing in common: they’ve all in their own way broken the school’s
rules and must spend the entire Saturday afternoon in the school library and
write an essay on ‘who they think they are’, basically reflecting on their
misbehavior. This essay is assigned to them by tough-as-nails assistant
principal Richard Vernon, who symbolizes the ‘villain’ of this film, the school
system and society in general (the parents, etc.) who are unable to invest the
time and effort required to truly communicate with these children. As time goes
on, our five characters begin to communicate and grow closer through a
combination of humor and confrontational dialogue through which they all start
to see each other not as their stereotype, but as a complex person and they
realize they’re not so different after all.
This might sound horribly clichéd,
but there are a couple of things to keep in mind: one, with The Breakfast Club, director/writer John
Hughes basically popularized this type of film aimed squarely at teenagers and
quickly became known as the voice of the teens who felt deeply misunderstood by
everyone around them. (Hughes would expand on this theme with Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.) In other words, you can’t simply judge
this film with the mindset of today’s world. On the other hand, as exemplified
by the film’s continued success, the film has attained a timeless quality. It’s
empathy for high school students with all its associated pressures has remained
popular and thus relevant, even
today. Two, what’s crucial to this film’s success are the actors. It’s not
often a film features mainly a group of actors the age of students who never
act in a way that feels cheap or unrealistic. Despite any grievances one might
have with Hughes’ screenplay, the cast delivers it honestly from beginning to
end. Also, there’s the quite realistic way the group starts to communicate…ever
so slowly. They don’t start talking immediately, but remain silent at first,
get bored, start picking on each other, etc. All these little interactions
contribute to the end of the film when they’re openly talking about and
confronting each other with their thoughts, fears, doubts, lifestyles, etc.
Going back to the grievances with the
screenplay, there are a few things that have aged about as well as Hughes’
career: for one thing, the film exudes the 80s out of its every pore, for
better or worse. Seen today, it’s likely some people would find the inclusion
of a montage clip with rock music to be unnecessary and over-the-top. There’s
also the character of Vernon who exudes so much anger and has it in for these
kids in such a way that it becomes hard to really take him seriously. He’s the
one-note adult who symbolizes all adults that fail to take these kids seriously
and listen to them.
Also, Hughes’ comedy occasionally falls flat and feels
inauthentic for a film claiming to speak for misunderstood teens. The scene
where Andrew comes walking out of a room as high as a kite and starts to run
around, ‘raging against the machine’ as it were, until he breaks a glass pane
with his screams, all backed up by 80s rock feels clichéd nowadays despite its
honest attempt at instilling the same, heartfelt enthusiasm in the viewer. There
are a few scenes where the comedy is played solely for laughs and doesn’t feel real, for instance the one where the
group falls asleep and Vernon walks in, telling them to wake up. They of course
remain fast asleep that is until Vernon asks who has to go to the bathroom upon
which they all quickly – and in unison – raise their arms. It’s this
type of humor that in retrospect signals the trash Hughes would eventually
write for films like Home Alone 3.
But in the end, the good way outstrips the bad. With
its cross-generational appeal, positive message and great acting, it’s easy to
see why this film has remained – and most likely will remain – so popular and
appealing. When, despite the 80s clichés, your film still remains popular with
teens even today, you know you’ve done something
right.
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