The Breakfast Club!

This movie, made in 1985, starring Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, and Judd Nelson, is one of mine and Anna's favorites. It follows a day in the life of The Breakfast Club , a group of high schoolers thrown together in detention on a Saturday. There's the princess (Molly Ringwald), the brain (Anthony Michael Hall), the athlete (Emilio Estevez), the basketcase, (Ally Sheedy), and the criminal (Judd Nelson). I've seen it about twelve million times, and Anna can quote every line, it's getting a little annoying.

Even though we've raved about it every time we review something, we're going to do it again. This movie, impeccably acted for a group of teenagers. I WISH I lived in 1985. The vomit that it thrown at our faces like High School Musical and Abduction are ruining the film industry for today youth and the previous generations as well. It's no wonder people want their lives to be a John Hughes movie as opposed to say reality television celebrities (if you could even call them that). It is only now that people realize what is becoming of film. In the case of Easy A and Fired Up, both directed by Will Gluck, finally coming out new smart and funny high school movies that are commendable. More about that another day. Judd Nelson by far out-acting everyone (I also think he had the most lines) and Anthony Michael Hall pre-steroids just makes me happy.

My favorite part is either the scene where they're running away from Vernon through the school, or when they're all getting high. I feel like the running montage really holds the entire gist of the movie, and of the wasted youth of teenagers in the eighties. The idea of running from authority and the idea of growing up and changing and becoming a puppet of society. Running from the ideals of society and of adults is, really, what teenagers do best, with society heaving and clutching at it's chest because it's old and slow. When Vernon and  Bender are in the storage closet, it shows how society manipulates and spits in the faces of teenagers, just because they have a different, more hedonistic view on life.

Next comes the part where they get high! I love this part for a couple reasons; it shows that sometimes it's okay to let go and to cave in to peer pressure, because sometimes very well done montages follow the taking of drugs. This is definitely the part that relates the best to teenagers; I'm not saying all teenagers smoke pot, but we've all done something that we weren't supposed to do and had a lot of fun doing it. It's just something teenagers do.

Ally Sheedy out acted Judd Nelson by far. Anna wrote that part, and lied. (No she didn't! I <3 Judd Nelson. <3 <3 <3)

This is a really long review. Oh well. The part where they're all sitting in a circle telling each other what they did to deserve a detention wasn't scripted, they all improvised. The part when Andrew is telling the story of how he taped Larry Lister's buns together, it really shows how adults affect teenagers--he did it to impress his father. I feel like it also shows how little teenagers have changed, and how they really won't change for a long time. When my mom was a teenager, she did the same things I do now; argue with teachers, leave at lunch and maybe not come back.

Then comes the ending--there is a revelation that comes to us, the idea that everybody can be anything, and inside each of us there is a brain, a criminal, a basket case, a princess, and an athlete. Take from the film what you will, because isn't that what being a teenager is all about?