The Breakfast Club

John Hughes has a reasonably effective stab at articulating teen alienation with this story of five high school rebels without causes on a day-long Saturday detention. Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy represent a cross-section of high school students (in order, a jock, a prom queen, a nerd, a punk and a loner) all different in style and deportment but sharing common problems of estrangement, low self-esteem and all the usual angst of growing up. We get to know them as they get to know each other and intermittently a macho teacher (Paul Gleason) appears to remind us why they are there.

The film is largely a lot of soul-baring interspersed with some rather cheesy '80s moments such Emilio Estevez freakin'  out to some hard rock and Ally Sheedy appearing with a girlie make-over, but that aside it’s probably a film that teenagers from any decade can relate to.  The fashions have changed but the problems remain the same.

FYI:  Already too-old for  high school students (they were all in their twenties) Nelson, Sheedy and Estevez would appear in the thematically-related post-adolescent coming-of-age drama St Elmo’s Fire which was released the same year

 

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