Critique of The Breakfast Club

Critique of The Breakfast Club

Breakfast Club is a comedy that was released in 1985. It was written, produced and directed by John Hughes. It’s about five teenage students from different social groups when forced to spend a Saturday together in detention they find themselves interacting with and understanding each other for the first time. A jock, Emilio Estevez, a stoner, Judd Nelson, a princess, Molly Ringwald, a basket case, Ally Sheedy, and a brain, Anthony Michael Hall, talk about everything from parental tension to sex to peer pressure to hurtful stereotypes while serving the eight hours in a library. Ultimately, the five find that they may have more in common than they ever imagined and learn more about themselves as well as each other.

It begins with loud rock music playing as a quote from a David Bowie song is on a black background. It shatters like glass to show the high school that they are spending their detention in while the brain, Brian, is talking in the background, the movie ends like this also. While he says different things there are parts of the school that are cut to. An example would be when he is talking about a criminal they show a locker that says, “Open this locker and you will die fag!!!” written in black marker on it. The rest of the story takes place in the school library and what the five students do while their principle isn’t looking. At one point they smoke marijuana and the boy that is a jock breaks a glass door. They also put music on and dance around all over the library.

One of the main characters John Bender, who they call Bender, is the criminal. He lights his shoe on fire to light a cigarette, he pulls apart books, and he steals the screw from the door that is suppose to be open so it closes and the principal can’t watch them. He ends up getting two months more of detention for telling of the principal by talking back to the principal. While that section of the movie is going on the camera angle makes the principal look really big because Bender is sitting down and the camera angle is angled up at the principal. Later in the movie he has all of them running in the hallway to go get marijuana. They are about to get caught but he tells the rest of the group to go back to the library and he takes the blame for not being in the library. The principal finds him and takes him to a closet by himself to sit for the ...

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...ays in them. This movie was the bases of all other teenage movies. The story was on teenage love and how one got to the point of the first kiss, which all movies have in it now. It didn’t really change people but it made people laugh. It is one of those movies that is out there to make people laugh and want that to happen to them. In the technical sense it wasn’t very difficult to make, but the camera angles showed every side of every character. An example would be when Bender and Andrew are arguing the camera keeps changing from Bender to Andrew but different parts of their faces. Another example is when the principal is giving Bender the other two months on detention. The principal is standing and Bender is sitting. The shoots keep changing from Bender to the principal. The camera angle makes the principal look bigger then he really is and it shows Benders different reactions to what is going on.

In conclusion, this movie is not a difficult movie to make but the acting had to be perfect and the camera angles had an effect in the movie. It’s a somewhat realistic movie. Voice over is used and it’s like a story being told to describe the essay that Brian writes for all of them.