Cliché alert: “The Breakfast Club” is one of my favorite movies.
It’s no “Citizen Cane,” it’s nothing heavily awarded, nor profound in some earth shattering way. The movie definitely contains elements that haven’t aged well, either, and there’s no excusing them.
Some of Bender (Judd Nelson) and Claire’s (Molly Ringwald) scenes leave you understandably uncomfortable and Allison’s (Ally Sheedy) “makeover,” while arguably well-meaning, is a disappointing disservice to her character. An unsurprising lack of diversity also permeates the film’s atmosphere in its absence.
If anything, the flaws of the movie shows you how much society and media has progressed in the almost 40 years since it first came out.
There is, however, no denying this movie’s impact on pop culture, and it remains an iconic piece of media in its own right. The movie’s often been parodied and copied—enough so that one criticism of the movie is it’s too clichéd—but nothing beats the original.
It’s also worth saying two things: Not every movie has to be some groundbreaking thing, just as long as it makes you feel something meaningful. And there’s no shame in liking something even if it’s popular or well-known, odds are it’s that way for a reason.
The eighties saw a boom in teenage-centric cinema: “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Sixteen Candles,” “Say Anything” and “Stand By Me.” But none of these movies resonated with me when I was younger as much as “The Breakfast Club” did.
Despite being grouped in with all ’80s movies, “The Breakfast Club” is able to stand apart from its companions in its attempt to present teenagers simply as they were. It was free of the extraneous fluff that was present in other movies popular of the time—there’s no big party, no big game, no rush to take the title of prom king/queen or to lose one’s virginity.
Instead, the movie takes place in Saturday detention, presenting high school as a kind of prison, one with a stifling and confining environment that presses down on its inhabitants. The prisoners in this case are five different students from distinct niches that can be found in essentially all high schools.
Initially cold to each other, as events progress, it begins to dawn on them that they really aren’t that much different from each other and the boundaries that separate them are completely superficial.
What’s more, there’s little sugarcoating in the movie. The characters feel like real individuals and there’s an emotional depth to the movie that most others of the same time can’t claim to possess. Each teenager has varying troubles at home and at school, as if growing up itself is not already hard enough.
There’s more than just angst; a good portion of the movie is assorted antics, from the iconic chase through the hallways to a ridiculous dancing montage.
The balance of surreal fun and terribly low moments feels so quintessentially teenager. It feels real.
In what is considered the emotional climax of the movie, the characters all sit in a circle, warmed up to each other and baring their hearts to one another. “When you grow up,” Allison, my favorite character, says with tears in her eyes, “your heart dies.”
While on par with the angst commonly spewed during teenagedom, is she really wrong, though?
It definitely resonated with me as a seventh grader watching it for the first time at a friend’s sleepover. Even though middle school feels like a distant memory now, I can’t quite let go of the place this movie has in my heart.