Judd Nelson , Emilio Estevez , Ally Sheedy , Molly Ringwald , and Anthony Michael Hall inThe Breakfast ClubUniversal Pictures
The late John Hughes once muse a continuation to his 1985 ode to adolescence , The Breakfast Club . The idea was that he ’d clean up years later with the same fictitious character , five suburban adolescent from dissimilar cliques who attend past their differences and counterfeit some mutual earth over a long Saturday in detainment . Simple brain race with the questions Hughes could answer by reconvene his party of five . Would neo - maxi - zoom - dweebie Brian become a meathead , just like the histrion who played him , Anthony Michael Hall ? Would the glam - up makeover that outsider Allison ( Ally Sheedy ) receives at the end of the film take ? Would burnout Bender ( Judd Nelson ) miss the lifetime in Loserville so many assume look him ?
It was an challenging sales pitch , at least for anyone who ’s ever enquire who these fictional Illinois fry might grow up to be . At the same time , maybe it ’s a relief that Hughes never fetch around to follow up on the musical theme . After all , the enduring appeal ofThe Breakfast Clubrests largely on the narrow parameter it sets for itself : It ’s just five kids in one way over a exclusive daytime . To expect beyond this mere snapshot of youth would be to betray its eternal present tense . The movie exist , irresistibly , in the moment , just like the teenagers who flock to it in initial firing and the many who have persist in to discover it over the four decade since .
Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall inThe Breakfast ClubUniversal Pictures
Arguably no filmmaker capitalize more on the teen experience than Hughes , the writer and sometimes music director of youth - courting sense likeSixteen Candles , Pretty in Pink , and of courseFerris Bueller ’s Day Off . But if all those movies could be called quintessential ’ 80 hits , The Breakfast Clubis more timeless , even as it unfolds completely within a kind of hourglass . The almost theatrical reductivism of Hughes ’ scenario transcend trends . He shave off all the extraneous conventions of high - schooltime movies . There ’s no big game , no prom , no graduation , no schoolroom even . It ’s a teen movie that say that the stripling alone are enough .
The Breakfast Club , which wrick 40 today ( they grow up so tight ! ) , made stars out of its stars – the gist members of the so - called Brat Pack that took Hollywood by storm for a few whirlwind class . It ’s primarily an pretend display case . When not switch sharp contumely , the five return tearful monologues — sometimes in a real traffic circle , à la a play gild . Like their characters , they had their whole life history ahead of them , and it ’s interesting to consider the careers that come after : Molly Ringwald becoming America ’s smasher before decamping for Paris , Emilio Estevez headline multiple hit franchises , Sheedy reinventing herself as an indie dearie . And who could have infer that Nelson , who arguably deliver the moving-picture show ’s most charismatic execution ( all unfit - boy bravado , until we get coup d’oeil of the scared kid underneath ) , would land a comfortable net sitcom gig a mere decennium after ?
The cinema is an optimistic fantasy of unexpected teenage solidarity . It pick out a little suspension of disbelief to imagine that eight hours together could turn “ a brain , an jock , a handbasket case , a princess , and a criminal ” into fast friends . Of course , Hughes ’ hand is smart enough to acknowledge the ephemeralness of their kumbaya : None of them hold too many delusions about their connection lasting once the five are back in their various social circles . That ’s the semisweet power of the Billboard - climbing Simple Minds anthem that both spread and closes the flick : “ Do n’t you forget about me ” is a affecting supplication to immortalize this fugitive day of sharing , even once it fades with the ring of the school campana .
The power structure of high school do n’t mean much in the grand schema of thing , The Breakfast Clubsays . It ’d be well-fixed to take that message seriously if Hughes did n’t end up kind of reinforcing them . Allison ’s miniaturePygmalionarc — go forth from the toilet like a return queen , dolled up by Ringwald ’s Claire — betrays both the quality ’s countercultural kookiness and the film ’s be - yourself ethos . She only wins the suspensor prince by fundamentally changing who she is ; it ’s a trailer of the makeover plots of future teen comedies likeShe ’s All ThatandDrive Me Crazy . And Hughes really does Brian dirty . However much empathy the jerk granary with the cool fry , he ’s still doing their homework as they copulate off and make out .
It ’s a little ironic that a movie all about count past stereotypes would codify them so much through its advertising campaign . That famousAnnie Leibovitz poster , with the cast huddle together , handle each recording label the characters refuse and rebel against as a marketable brand . The Breakfast Clubmight be the most influential teen motion picture of them all , and part of its influence was turning the genre into one big plot of opposites appeal . How many major teen moving picture and TV shows descend their tension from the clash of coterie , and the supposedly revelatory revelation that jock , freak , and geeks are n’t so different after all ?
you may see a little ofThe Breakfast Clubin virtually every quick - witted teen amusement that came after it . While films likeHeathersexplicitly positioned themselves as sardonic rebutter to the Hughes school of kids - are - all - right sentimentality , plenty of descendants of the crowing and small screen simply update the writer - director ’s modelling for younger propagation , swap the music and fashion and slang , but not the essential look . The Breakfast Club ’s single day of tiff and bonding bled into everything fromScreamtoMy - So Called Lifeto the collegiateCommunity(a sitcom that cite the moving-picture show in its first sequence , and coif a guest spot for Hall a few weeks later on ) .
It ’s also what you could call an all-important Gen X text : BeforeReality BitesorSinglesor the comparably gabby employment of Richard Linklater , there was this portrayal of five teens part by social status but connect by their shared disaffection and desire not to become their parents . Not that the Latchkey Generation has a monopoly on such feelings . One reasonThe Breakfast Clubendures where some of its ’ 80 contemporaries do n’t is that it gets at the indispensable identity crisis of growing up : The whole man seems place in define you ( and your future ) at a sentence when you ’re still very much on the cusp of count on that out for yourself .
You could say that the kids ofThe Breakfast Clubaren’t just rebel against the boxes everyone want to put them . They ’re arise against the pressure to beanythingbefore they ’re ready to determine who they are . That ’s the literal reason a subsequence was a bad idea , however appealing it may have sounded . In deplumate a single significant Clarence Shepard Day Jr. out of the lives of these characters — the form any kid might mythically blow up in their head , at a meter when every emotion and experience feels monolithic — Hughes remained dead on target to the embryonic beauty of late childhood , when the possibility still seem endless because they essentially are . The movie is a freeze frame , just like the one on which it triumphantly , iconically end .
