WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. ONLY READ IF YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM
This was one of the ultimate "cool to like" films in the eighties, a film that had all teens doting on it because, well, it has so much ... meaning... doesn't it? Actually, no. Five students, at least three of them one-dimensional blandies, spend eight hours in detention where they allegedly "find themselves." Except only one of them has anything interesting to say.
It opens with a written quote from David Bowie, the hallmark of student pretension, which then explodes into shards. Whoo, rock and roll! This is revolutionary filmmaking at its peak. Worst thing about the movie is that it temporarily convinced a significant proportion of society that Simple Minds were actually worth listening to.
How old was John Hughes when he wrote this film? Fourteen, and full of angst? Like some awful sixth-form play, The Breakfast Club is filled with clumsily written amateur psychology. Molly Ringwald gets the brunt of it, and all the worst lines. Gems like "You know why guys like you knock everything? Cos you're afraid" meet "I have just as many feelings as you do, and it hurts just as much when someone steps all over them." Other characters get to say things like "When you grow up, your heart dies" and "If you love someone, it's okay."
Judd Nelson chiefly carries the film as the only interesting character, and the one with the best lines. Saying "eat my shorts" four years before The Simpsons, and telling a teacher "Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?" he's by far the most appealing element of the movie. However, his describing of being beaten at the hands of his father is marred by loud incidental synth music, the hallmark of the eighties. Thankfully, there are no skinny ties or mullet haircuts, meaning it hasn't otherwise dated too badly in that regard.
Some ill-advised comedy moments - The Bridge on the River Kwai parody, Anthony Michael Hall being stoned and Emilio Estivez breaking a glass door by shouting at it - work against the piece, and are quite cringingly embarrassing to watch. The film then takes on issues that the characters in the film seem to think are hugely important, but are really just everyday and banal. The group seem desperate to hold on to the secret that three of them are virgins, or that they don't get along with their parents, but such things are hardly Earth-shattering.
Where the film really falls down is in the climax, where the group - who are now suddenly inseparable soul mates - turn into a bunch of bleeding hearts, mewling and wailing over what are really pretty much run of the mill problems. Judd Nelson aside, the rest of this crew has no cause for social dysfunction that isn't above the killingly ordinary. Maybe that's the point, but, like Flatliners, where a group of young students had their sins come to haunt them, the fact that people of that age won't have done anything of real note is called into question. Ringwald is cut up about the fact that her parents are so rich, and she has to agree with all her friends. "You just don't understand all the pressures they can put on you." Oh, shame. Sporty Estivez, meanwhile, is a high-school jock who once taped a man's buttocks together because he was trying to impress his dominant father. Okay, not nice, but not exactly the skeleton in the closet you'd wait ninety minutes to hear, right? I'm sure most athletic students do a lot worse things, every day of the week.
Anthony Michael Hall, the least of the "Where Are They Now?" entrants, as no-one hires nerds for Hollywood films any more, was contemplating suicide because he couldn't make a ceramic elephant. Ally Sheedy, in the most thankless role, acts weird because her parents ignore her and she just wants people to notice her.
All of which would be fine, and, indeed, despite the criticisms I've made, The Breakfast Club is nicely directed, acted and imminently watchable. But what cripples the film is its overreaching pretension, particularly the trite closing monologue, which is cliched and squalid. Like the tagline for the movie - "They met only once, but it changed their lives forever" - it smacks of corny movie trailer dialogue and is overearnest. Pat resolution has the group coupled off (except for poor Hall), with Estivez clinging on to Sheedy after finding she doesn't look that bad with different makeup. Rather a shallow indictment. Though the weirdest thing is, despite watching this and regarding it as a deeply flawed movie, I still voted it 6/10.
