The Breakfast Club
Director: John Hughes
Writer: John Hughes
Cast: Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, John Kapelos, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy
Seen on: 17.6.2023

Content Note: sexism/misogyny, sexualized violence

Plot:
John (Judd Nelson), Andrew (Emilio Estevez), Allison (Ally Sheedy), Claire (Molly Ringwald) and Brian (Anthony Michael Johnson) have all been sentenced to Saturday detention, each for their own reason. They have only one thing in common, really: spending Saturday in the school library under the watchful eye of Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason) with the other four is the worst time they can imagine. Nevertheless, the more time they spend together, the more they learn about each other.

The Breakfast Club is one of those films that everybody seems to know but that I have never watched. Now that I have, let me side-eye canonization processes even more than I already did for making this movie a classic.

There is something to be said for the concept of the film. There is always something interesting in forcing strangers to interact with each other, especially when they dislike each other or don’t think they have anything in common. That being said, the results here when they do start to get to know each other are stereotypical at best. Everybody has a secret that they couldn’t have imagined sharing at the beginning of detention. All those secrets reveal their vulnerable core and are both excuse and explanation for bad behavior. And sharing them makes everything magically better. The thing is: the secrets are so obvious, you could probably guess them from the character introductions – and not in a way that makes it good foreshadowing, just in a way that makes it feel flat.

Even worse than the lack of depth there was the romance that is pretty much forced in. But of course, we couldn’t have it if people would have remained uncoupled. And in the romance it is particularly obvious that the film was written by a man. It includes not only a scene where John shoves his face unbidden and unwanted into Claire’s crotch as basically her sexual awakening, but also a make-over that strips Allison of her weirdness so she is attractive enough for Andrew. Fuck that.

I already wasn’t a huge fan of Sixteen Candles when I saw it a few years ago, but at least that film had some charm. With The Breakfast Club I really can’t see why it has endured as long as it did, and why people are still talking about John Hughes with any kind of reverence. The cast is pretty good, given that they have very little to work with, but that’s about the kindest thing I can say here.

Summarizing: time to let this one go to oblivion.