Take a trip back to a time when it was actually seen as socially acceptable to wear a t-shirt with Simple Minds IN CONCERT! emblazoned across the chest, and youll find yourself in 1985: the year of The Breakfast Club.
John Hughes, the undisputed king of clean-cut teen comedy, wrote and directed this angsty High School drama about a group of five conflicting classroom neer-do-wells who all end up spending their entire Saturday together in what seems like a particularly harsh form of detention (Seriously, WEKEND detention? Does that really happen? And I thought lunchtime detention was bad!!).
Theres sports jock Andy (Emilio Estevez), unfortunately-named rebel Bender (Judd Nelson), the annoyingly popular Claire (Molly Ringwald), proto-goth Allison (Ally Sheedy), and flame-haired physics geek Brian (Anthony Michael Hall). Together, theyve been set the punishment exercise (or punny eckie as we used to call them ah, those were the days!) of writing a 1000-word paper on who you are. And, credit where its due, the gang of yoofs do end up discovering a whole lot about themselves over the course of the day but it sure aint thanks to any essay.
With its strong dialogue and simple-but-effective subject matter, The Breakfast Club is a wonderful viewing experience, though its not without its problems. The films focal point party of five universally recognised at the time as Hollywoods Brat Pack arent all perfectly cast, with some serious suspension of disbelief required to accept either the scrawny Estevez as a wrestling team hard man or Nelson as anywhere near to school-age (he was actually 25 when this came out, but looks more like 30). Its also surprisingly weak on the comedy front, with Hughes using occasional spurts of comic relief more as a conscious effort to hold his target audiences attention than to produce any genuine laughs. In fact, the two best chortles I had when watching it were both unintentional: Estevezs hilarious bout of what can only be described as punch dancing, and another scene where he breaks down in tears whilst describing the frankly ridiculous act of taping a fellow pupils bum-cheeks together.
On the whole though, its easy to see why twenty years later the film is still held in such high esteem by punters and critics alike. Sure, the characters may seem clichéd now, but its worth bearing in mind that they werent at the time if anything, this movie was the trail-blazer that set the standard for every teen drama or comedy weve seen since.