The Breakfast Club - Movie Review
1"The Breakfast Club" (1985) written and directed by John Hughes is obviously a nostalgic coming of age classic but it can be a bit boring and tone deaf by today's standards. I do think it's an important one to watch though if you are a film buff.
Five high school students spend their Saturday stuck in school for detention. They have very different personalities from each other and do not like one another. One by one they begin to open up about their troubled home lives and begin to connect with each other. By the end of their detention they are friends with a deeper understanding for each other's circumstances and why they are the way they are.
The Breakfast Club is great because it's an R-rated coming of age high school teen movie that doesn't hold back in it's realistic portrayals of troubled youth. The content matter can go surprisingly extreme and while it certainly makes the viewer uncomfortable, it's a realistic and respectable comfortability that you may be able to relate to and will definitely be able to empathize with. The film is the perfect definition of a "dramedy," so if you are into those then you will enjoy this. It has one of the most iconic endings in cinematic history as well as an unforgettable theme song which will induce goosebumps.
So the film is legendary and great and all that, but why don't I give it a perfect score then? Well it's a similar story to "Back to the Future" (1985) for me, I felt many aspects did not age well and can be quite cringe. 25 year old Judd Nelson attempts to seduce and ends up kissing 17 year old Molly Ringwald throughout the film and while it may not offend me as much as most people since it's not that uncommon where I live, it is certainly a strange casting choice that was a error in my opinion; and in general I really disdain casting adult actors to play teenaged characters. Now the offensive language did not bother me here as much as it did in Back to the Future because it's entirely realistic and is absolutely the kind of things people this age say every day, but one last issue for me is that the movie can also be maybe a smidge bit boring at times just because it is a 1h 37m film that takes place in a single bottle location.
The Breakfast Club is awesome but has not aged super well. It's definitely still worth watching at least once though.
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