Movie Review: The Breakfast Club

In the early 1980s the movie, The Breakfast Club, which was directed and produced by John Hughes was released to the public. This movie is about how five teenage kids, all coming from different financial backgrounds, each from different cliques yet all are spending their Saturday in high school detention. The characters include Claire the preppy, well off girl, Andrew the varsity athlete, Brain the little nerdy boy who seems to come from a normal working class family, then there is Allison the girl known as the basket case, and lastly there is Bender. Bender is the problem child of the group, he is the social outcast and is the main focus throughout the story line. The teens, once locked in the school library are told to write a paper, a

Before the movie was released all the main characters were adults or young children making it rare for teens to be the center of attention. The Breakfast Club is based on the five high school kids, who are all different but throughout the movie they slowly come together. The characters accomplish things; overcome personal boundaries and all this is done by coming together. At the start of the production, when the parents are dropping them off out front of the school you have Claire who’s father is apologizing because he could not get her out of the detention, to Andrew who is being yelled at for being in that particular position to Bender who just casually strolls up to the school by himself; however each of them having a different life they are all going through the same torture, detention. As the movie progresses on and the detainees realize that they can be friends they come across a problem. They are all from different cliques, and for the most part none of them communicated during school. In one particular scene, there is a conversation that states, “ Oh, be honest Andy. If Brain came walking up to you in the hall Monday, what would you do? I mean picture this you’re there with all the sports. I know exactly what you’d do: you’d say hi to him and when he left you’d cut him all up so your friends wouldn’t think you really like him!” (Hughes 1985). The speaker of that particular quote was Claire and she makes a good point, no matter how close the kids became during their time in detention it was going to be hard for them if they wished to remain friends in the real high school