Rating: two 1/2 stars (out of four)

John Hughes’s The Breakfast Clubhas become something of a cult classic in the decades since its 1985 release, equaling or surpassing other pictures from this talented writer, at least in the public’s eye.  In it, five high school students, who conveniently represent a few of their student body’s cliques, have been forced to spend one precious Saturday in detention.  There’s the jock, Andrew (Emilio Estevez); the princess, Claire (Molly Ringwald); the brain, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall); the weirdo, Allison (Ally Sheedy); and the criminal, Bender (Judd Nelson).

As a film, The Breakfast Cluboccupies a critical point in movie history.  The actors were all “Brat Pack” regulars—for Hughes favorite Ringwald, this bracketed Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink, and Sheedy, Nelson, and Estevez would star, with others, in the awful St. Elmo’s Fire later the same year.  As Roger Ebert pointed out, it’s an “all-star cast” of younger actors, and the film is worth watching for anyone about to enter high school, but not as much as, say, Mean Girls.  Ultimately, it’s a frustrating, contradictory movie, not nearly as consistent as other Hughes works Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or as heartwarming as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.   

The stereotypical classifications of the main characters are meant to represent both the way the school principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason) and their fellow inmates view them.  The entire movie takes place at school during the day, almost all of that inside the library, where these five challenge each other’s misconceptions of themselves.  Learning tolerance, Hughes tells us, is a lot easier when you want others to view you more sympathetically. 

The de facto leader of the group is Bender, the obnoxious, loud, arrogant, and generally rebellious student who manages to infuriate everyone within about 15 minutes.  Bender, though not uninteresting, is a bit of a contrived character.  Judd Nelson does what he can with the character, and it’s not unrealistic for a high school detention to feature someone like him, but some of his antics feel forced, thrown in by Hughes to keep the plot moving.  

Though I’ll give the movie credit for not going the route of The Graduateby refusing to anoint the adults with first names, it’s difficult to deny that the principal is a hopeless caricature.  I suppose that’s the point, but it makes for quite a one-sided viewpoint.  Some of the things Vernon says to Bender have merit—in particular “You ought to spend a little more time trying to do something with yourself and a little less time trying to impress people.”—but it’s tough to take them seriously when he follows them with a promise to start “cracking skulls” the next time they misbehave.  Likewise, his fighting words to Bender later on in the film feel as out of place as the fight between Richard Gere and Lou Gossett at the end of An Officer and a Gentleman.  Andrew fighting Bender makes sense; the principal taunting him doesn’t.

A more balanced perspective is shown towards the faceless parents of the students.  Though everyone, naturally, professes to not get along with his or hers—If I said that I did, says Andrew, “you’d think I was an idiot.”—they’re not necessarily the problems in the kids’ lives.  Brian, we can infer, has supportive, loving parents; they may be overly concerned about grades, or he may just think they’re overly concerned about grades.  Likewise, Claire doesn’t like her parents, but it becomes clear that she has bigger issues with her friends and her school. 

A little less credible, though, are the personas of Andrew’s father, who demands athletic success from him, or Bender’s, who abuses him.  Those stock types could be believable if the film did something with them, but they’re just slipped in towards the end to try to make us view each person a little more sympathetically.

Hughes adds a few nice touches along the way to keep things interesting.  I admire his willingness to keep the entire film moderately paced, in one setting, with no special effects whatsoever.  I also like the use of music, as the students dance, whistle, or air guitar to the songs playing in the background.  Credit is also due to his inclusion of one of my favorite characters in movies, period, the “weirdo” played by Ally Sheedy.  The film’s most satisfying moments almost all involve her—when she empties her bag onto a couch and explains its contents, when she reveals why she’s in detention (a truly fantastic moment), and when Claire transforms her appearance to uncover physical beauty that had lain dormant.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t manage to quite transform anyone emotionally quite as much.  Because of its lack of special effects and series of conversations between people attempting to get under the other’s skin, it reminded me in some ways of Closer, but it manages to convey neither that film’s great sense of atmosphere and mood nor its heart.  Closer revealed the emotional breaking points of all of its characters, but nothing in The Breakfast Club strikes that deeply.  My love for Ally notwithstanding, I can’t deny that we don’t really get to know anyone that well. 

And Hughes, though he makes some good choices, adds too many distractions to the story.  In my opinion, the film never should have left the library once the principal put them in there.  By giving us Bender running around the school and needless conversations with the principal and janitor, Hughes ruins the atmosphere of the film.  I liken this to Cast Away, which would have crashed and burned if Robert Zemeckis had ever cut away from Tom Hanks while he was on the island to go back to Memphis.  Hughes spends about 90% of the time in the library and suddenly decides to roam to the principal’s office, the gymnasium, and Bender’s locker; a bolder move would have been to keep the students in one place the whole time.

The Breakfast Club also falters because its writing is not perfectly sharp.  When Claire is berating Bender for his refusal to get involved in the school, she expresses scorn for the academic clubs of which Brian is a member, and Hughes misses the opportunity for Bender to point out the hypocrisy in Claire’s viewpoint.  This is microcosmic of the film’s problems: a few of the conversations that take place are substantive—addressing sex, cliques, popularity, authority—but the movie never really goes anywhere with them.  I never got the impression that the students have learned anything or changed in any meaningful way from their day.  When Claire eventually falls for Bender, for example, it doesn’t feel like something stemming from a change in her attitude towards him; it just feels like a sudden and unexplained plot twist.  There has been little previously to indicate that her feelings for him have softened.    

It may seem as though I dislike this film, but the truth is that I point out its flaws only because it intrigues me so much.  I think it could have been a great film, but instead it’s merely decent.  I love the set-up, and I laugh out loud numerous times in it.  I can relate, at least partially, to Brian, Andrew, and Ally, and Nelson’s Bender eventually turns around from being a mere simpleton to the character least afraid of telling the truth.  His comeback to Claire about supposedly not having any purpose at the school has real bite, and even if his parents represent a bit of a stereotype, Nelson just about makes it work, thanks to his spot-on acting in scenes such as the one when he describes his last Christmas: “It was a banner fucking year at the old Bender family.  I got a carton of cigarettes–the old man grabbed me and said, ‘Hey, smoke up, Johnny.’” 

Such scenes have edginess and power.  Unfortunately, the resolutions are somewhat pat and underdeveloped, which is why The Breakfast Club is best enjoyed with low expectations; otherwise you won’t be able to shake its tentativeness and unwillingness to make a strong statement.  There is a moment when the five students discuss whether they’ll view each other differently come Monday—but I’m not so sure they will.  The likelihood that Hughes is making a statement with that fact is all but impossible.