Hi everyone!
Welcome back to Film Buff Fridays! Today’s film is probably one of the most impactful films I’ve seen in my lifetime, a film that helped me to understand my high school years a little better. It’s one of my favorite films from John Hughes as well, though not my favorite film. If you like coming of age films like this, but looking for a more modern take, check out “Dude” (Episode #111), “Candy Jar” (Episode #118), “The Kissing Booth” (Episode #132), and “Alex Strangelove” (Episode #160). And if you have any John Hughes favorites, let me know at onemoviepunch.com or reach out to me on social media.
And now...
Today’s movie is “The Breakfast Club” (1985), the high school movie classic written and directed by John Hughes. The film follows five students at Shermer High School who have managed to land themselves in detention on a Saturday. Each student is expected to write an essay about who they are, but once the administrator leaves them alone, they begin to interact with one another, forming a temporary bond to pass the day.
Spoilers ahead.
I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in a Chicago exurb, which are the communities past the suburbs that would be swallowed up in the expanding suburbanization. During that time, before the Internet could bring culture to the world in an instant, most regions of the country got their culture from two sources: television and film. It created a weird lag, sometimes more than a decade, and given the lack of content compared to today, some television shows and films would literally define a generation of white suburbanites. “The Breakfast Club” is one of those films, along with most of the John Hughes catalog, and while the stereotypes were a decade older by the time I got to high school, they weren’t exactly all that far off, thanks to the influence of older siblings having their younger siblings view the film as a sort of rite of passage.
Of course, folks only really remembered the particularly foul language and crude humor that made it incredibly quotable, and its own kind of meme back in the day. Hell, I still quote Bender (Judd Nelson) on a weekly basis, but only the wry stuff, not the obviously sexist dialogue. I mostly watched it for the laughs as an adolescent, but I have come to appreciate the film for its honesty and forthrightness, somehow both defining and lambasting the clique-based behavior of monochromatic suburban high schools, and with some pretty challenging themes during the third act confession scenes, like Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) bringing a gun to school, Bender getting abused in the home, Andrew (Emilio Estevez) living his father’s dreams, Claire (Molly Ringwald) living in an affluent, yet empty home, and most of all to me, Allison (Ally Sheedy) as not wanting to become their parents, despite the social inertia to the contrary. The characters not only understand their differences, but also come to understand their similarities.
John Hughes was a natural talent as both a writer and a director, even if I have a lot of concerns with some thematic content in many of his films. Molly Ringwald recently reflected about the obvious sexism and homophobia in “The Breakfast Club”, but also the obvious racism in “Sixteen Candles”. It was privilege, plain and simple, that not only allowed Hollywood to sell this kind of content, but also to shield it from meaningful criticism for so long. It doesn’t take away from Hughes’ ability to frame a shot or capture a period in time as well as he does, but no one who wishes to praise this film as much as I want to can do so without acknowledging these serious flaws. I would almost like to see a rebooted “Hughesverse” that corrects some of these flaws in the writing, or at least treats the contextual racism and sexism of the time in a more respectful manner, instead of the guilty pleasure it so often ends up being, especially to fans who feel the need to defend it, or explain it away. Imagine a limited series put together kind of like “Castle Rock” for Shermer, IL, or maybe even a series of one-off films for each of the five characters culminating into a rebooted version of “The Breakfast Club”. Lots of great work that could build off the great content contained in the Hughesverse, one that takes the very best of the talent, and blunts the very worst of the thematic material.
“The Breakfast Club” (1985) is easily one of the most influential films I’ve ever seen. It was personally influential, for better and worse, in my early years, but also influential towards the coming of age film genre as a whole. The film also contains a lot of latent sexism and homophobia, which might be accurate for the time period, but is also a problem for later viewings. Fans of coming of age films who haven’t seen this film should definitely do so, if only to see its immense influence. Everyone else should approach the film keeping its historical context firmly in mind. It’s a great film, but it has definite flaws by today’s much more evolved social norms.
Rotten Tomatoes: 88% (CERTIFIED)
Metacritic: 62
One Movie Punch: 8.8/10
“The Breakfast Club” (1985) is rated R and is currently streaming on Netflix.
