John Hughes seminal high school classic The Breakfast Club puts five barely acquainted students from different social orders into the library on a weekend to serve out a detention. The day begins with stereotype reinforcing banter. It’s easy to differentiate the jock (Emilio Estevez) from the outcast (Ally Sheedy), the spoiled rich girl (Molly Ringwald) from a nerdy A student (Anthony Michael Hall) and the burnout (Judd Nelson) from all of them. But soon their forced conversation –what else can they do? —leads to soul-searching confessionals and the crumbling of the social order walls that their high school identities impose on them. The Breakfast Club ends with the following quote, written by the brain, but delivered via voice-over with each student chiming in: “You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.”
The simple genius of the movie is in the way it manages to accept and discuss those labels without really subverting them... (Read my full nostalgia heavy article at Zoom-In)*
