So, I had plans to see The Menu this past weekend, but honestly, I realized I had far too much to do on Sunday. I had papers to grade, assignments to write up. Various chores that accumulated over the weekend. A trip to the local multiplex was probably going to eat up time I couldn’t afford, and I really do want to see The Menu. Hopefully I’ll have time for it next weekend. In the meantime, I do have some stuff I’ve seen that I hadn’t gotten around to writing up yet, the first of which was The Breakfast Club.
No, I had never seen The Breakfast Club before, but I will chalk that up mostly to not being much of a John Hughes fan.
Five high school students show up for a Saturday detention. They are star athlete Andrew (Emilio Estevez), rich girl Claire (Molly Ringwold), brainy nerd type Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), criminal type Bender (Judd Nelson), and quirky oddball Allison (Ally Sheedy). Each of them are in there for different reasons, and they don’t really seem to be getting along, but Vice Principal Vernon (Paul Gleason) wants them to write an essay saying exactly who they think they are, and he’ll clash with Bender if nothing else. The only other person in the building is Carl the janitor (John Kapelos), but he seems friendly to the kids if nothing else.
Naturally, while all five kids fit a different stereotype, over the course of their detention, they get to know each other and become friends because, well, each of them is under various pressures caused by parents and the like, and even the ones who appear to have it good have some deep-seeded resentments and anxieties. Essentially, if Vernon was looking to break them in some way, he failed miserably, and even if Bender got multiple more Saturdays detention, he can still raise his fist in triumph as the only kid who has to walk home.
So, confession time: as I said above, I’m not much of a John Hughes fan. I’ll admit to liking Home Alone and a couple of his other movies, but some of the 80s high school stuff he did I either skipped or, as I got older, I was a little less impressed by Ferris Bueller’s antics the older I got. In the case of Ferris, I basically think he’s an entitled jackass and nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is. As for Hughes, many of his scripts feel more like sketches tied together into a story of some sort, and his reputation as someone who knew how teenagers in the 80s actually talked, well…I was a teenager in the 80s and 90s, and I don’t think I talked much like that. Essentially, for something like The Breakfast Club, I more or less realized that I probably would have enjoyed this far more if I caught it when I was younger than I do now.
Which is not to say the movie is bad. Far from it. The five main members of the cast, especially Nelson, all give great performances. The script really digs into these characters. The direction is largely solid. The bottom line is I figure I am little too old to really appreciate this movie as I should. I can appreciate the movie for what it is, but ultimately, as good as it was, it just isn’t my thing.
Grade: B+
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