The Breakfast Club: Does It Hold Up?
Brat Pack Deep Dive
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to a new series I’ll be doing for these next few weeks before I head back to college! This is going to be a deep dive into the Brat Pack movies of the 80s, a collection of films with such cultural significance that I felt the need to familiarize myself with them formally. The Brat Pack was a group of young actors, including Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Andrew McCarthy, and Judd Nelson, who starred in the teen blockbusters of the 1980s. Their impact on fashion, culture, and filmmaking was– and still is– totally major. The term “Brat Pack,” a play on the “Rat Pack” of the 50s, was originally an insult, but its advent ironically solidified the fame and renown of the group. I have seen some of these movies before, but for the purposes of this series of reviews I will be analyzing them with a simple question: do they hold up?
Now, before I get on with answering this question, I should define my terms. What does it mean for a movie to “hold up?” As a lover of all things 80s, I am not looking for a movie that is completely in line with modern standards of social awareness, filmmaking norms, or anything like that. I appreciate and often prefer the aesthetic and formal characteristics of older films! However, having been born 30 years after this film came out, I am able to apply a certain critical gaze that is free from the blur of nostalgia. I can really ask myself: Does this film still resonate emotionally? Are its concepts, characters, and convictions still relevant? Are there heinous violations of social or moral standards that I as a modern viewer consider important? These are some of the questions I have to consider when deciding if a film holds up. There’s also the simple matter of, well, is it good? Is the humor cringe now? Do the plot beats land? Do people just like it because it came out when they were kids? And so on, and so forth. I hope this clarifies what I’m looking for as I review these movies.
Though I am physically in Los Angeles(thank god), I transported myself to Illinois early by starting this series with “The Breakfast Club.” No, I had never seen this movie before; yes, I am ashamed. There’s a John Hughes themed hotel in my college town, and now I can order the “Don’t You Forget About Me” from the cocktail menu without feeling like a poser. This film was released in 1985, and it features five high schoolers who find themselves trapped in a nightmarish eight-hour Saturday detention together and eventually set aside their differences to connect with one another over the course of the day.
This is a wonderful premise, one that immediately drew me in. The beginning of “The Breakfast Club” is very strong; we start with images of high school detritus, instantly recognizable tableaus of the generic American academic environment. Then, our cast make themselves known immediately through very strong archetypal characterization: Brian’s (Anthony Michael Hall) scolding mother, Claire’s (Molly Ringwald) fancy car, Andrew’s (Emilio Estevez) bullying father, and Allison’s (Ally Sheedy) solitary stumble into the middle of the street. These people are established immediately and continue to be pigeonholed over the course of the film’s first act; everything about them from their hair to their clothes to their speech patterns to their lunches serve to tell us, the audience, exactly who they are. The lunches were particularly amusing; we’ve all been eating lunch at school and looked around at the students next to us and thought, what is that kid eating? Allison’s bizarre, sugary sandwich reminded me vividly of the kids who would bring troublingly unhealthy lunches, leaving me to conclude that there must be something weird going on but it’s not really my business.
The aforementioned archetypes are as follows: athlete, brain, criminal, basket case, and princess. These could be otherwise defined as jock, nerd, rebel, freak, and queen bee. Regardless of how I phrase it, these are familiar high school presences. Even if you went to a school more or less populated solely with nerds and freaks like I did, most people are at least familiar with these concepts. This is in large part due to the popularity of “The Breakfast Club.” While we may have been aware of the school cliques before this movie, it put that crucial teenage element into words. There is no “Mean Girls” without “The Breakfast Club;” there’s also no “Clueless,” for that matter. This is a foundational text in terms of the teen genre, which makes it feel simultaneously trite and endlessly relevant.
The students are monitored by a power-tripping principal, a mainstay of 80s high school movies. He warns troublemaking Bender (Judd Nelson), “You mess with the bull, you get the horns!” Dull, jaded, and needlessly cruel, this square represents the future these kids dread. His physical presence in the film is not constant, but he manages to loom over the students in a more emotional way. At one point, the principal converses with the janitor about his career path, explaining both his distaste for today’s youth and the trajectory of his disillusionment over time. This man was once a person– a young person, even. It terrifies the students that they might one day grow out of their feelings and become a blank like their parents and their teachers.
Over the course of the film, the unlikely assemblage find themselves connecting in a variety of ways, forced to bond through shared suffering. They discover they have things in common, like hating their parents. They rag on each other for their many, many differences. Insults fly more frequently than comforting remarks, especially from Bender, “the criminal.” He starts off amusingly rebellious but later devolves into outright cruelty. I had thought that he would later be redeemed in some way, but this never happened, leaving me soured on the character altogether. Even worse was his sudden romantic connection with “princess” Claire, a person he had been nothing but awful to throughout the movie.
This brings me to the part where I bring up all the dated things that made me wince. It’s 1985, so obviously the female characters will be subject to sexually inappropriate behavior from the guys. The most stomach-churning instance of this is when Bender got under Claire’s desk and put his face up her skirt(????). Just not cool! Claire is also mocked throughout the film for her virginity, which she may or may not still possess. This teasing is occasionally lighthearted but often just uncomfortable, bordering on harassment. In addition, a few stray F-slurs are thrown around, but that’s about all. Could be worse, but could definitely be better.
Aside from some overwrought emotional moments, distasteful treatment of women, and Bender’s whole deal, I really enjoyed this movie. The music is obviously completely awesome, the dialogue is hilarious, and everyone is so cute. It’s not my favorite John Hughes film, but I had a great time watching it and I truly appreciate how significant it was– and still is– culturally. I think that renown is definitely earned. My verdict: this holds up!