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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Breakfast Club: John Hughes' 1985 Time Capsule



Few filmmakers were as willing to date their films as the late John Hughes. While that may ultimately doom his long-term legacy, there’s no disputing that this is part of what made him so massively successful at the peak of his powers. His films are so incredibly of their time and place that they couldn’t help but resonate with the young people who went out to see them in droves. The problem with me is that the ’80s have never been an era that fascinated me from an artistic standpoint, and thus the films of John Hughes have yet to really click with me. He had his share of unimpeachably great films—I would agree that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is terrific—but other movies like, say, The Breakfast Club have never really pulled me in. In this case, I cared so little about it that I never got around to seeing it until just recently.


I ultimately chose to watch the whole thing because The Breakfast Club is still a John Hughes film to which many continue to flock. It was referenced countless times in the first season of Community, and whenever a motley crew of diverse-minded people get together it normally isn’t long before someone pulls out a Breakfast Club reference. Even if I hadn’t seen the film in its entirety, I always knew the basic gist. Five high schoolers show up for an abnormally long detention, and while they initially think they have nothing in common they wind up sharing their dirty little secrets with each other and ultimately discover they are more alike than anyone thought. Cue “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” The trouble is that when you’re making a movie about how everyone is more than their stereotype, you have to create characters that are more than their stereotype. The Breakfast Club never quite pulls this off.

Even then, I completely understand how it resonated so strongly with the kids of the time, and I also understand how modern high-schoolers may still be attracted to this band of characters. I don’t entirely understand why the movie around them still strikes a chord with people, but I’ll get to that. There’s no denying that in creating these five characters, Hughes touched on all the basic high school stereotypes. For those unfamiliar, there is the jock (Emilio Estevez), the popular girl (Molly Ringwald), the geek (Anthony Michael Hall), the rebel (Judd Nelson) and the outcast (Ally Sheedy). I didn’t refer to them all using the terms the film employs, but you get the idea. The problem with the film today is that high school cliques aren’t so clear-cut anymore. I doubt they were ever as simplistic as movies make them out to be, but the waters are even more muddied these days than ever. (There are a couple sequences in this year's 21 Jump Street that address such topics.) The Breakfast Club might as well be titled Broad Strokes: The Movie. It touches on plenty of important things, but it’s never as “real” as it thinks it is. At least when viewed through today’s lens.

The first act of The Breakfast Club sets everything up promisingly. The opening credits begin, we hear the soothing, incredibly ’80s tones of “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” and we watch as our heroes are dropped off for their day of being locked up in a library. (Let me pause here and mention that despite its obvious age, that song may be the part of the film that has held up best.) Immediately we get our first taste of who these people are based on their interactions with their parents. Ringwald’s father is understanding, Hall’s mother demands that he study all day, Estevez’s father is angry that his son’s behavior might impact any potential scholarships, Nelson just kind of shows up and Sheedy has no interaction with her guardians. It can all be a little on the nose, sure, but it’s nothing compared to what is to come.

Then the film’s greatest flaw shows up, and he goes by the name of Principal Dick Vernon. All these characters are stereotypes, but Vernon (played by Paul Gleason) is just a cartoon character. Considering the film’s real subjects are the students, it probably was a mistake to create a major authority figure at all. Certainly this scenario requires a principal or someone to oversee their detention, but surely we could have done without such a ridiculous, black-and-white character. The Breakfast Club is a film that ostensibly celebrates the inherent hazards of labeling youths, and thus it’s a bit strange to have a major adult character that serves little purpose besides taking up the bumbling villain role. I suppose the janitor is meant to be a more sympathetic figure, but that’s small consolation.

The best part of the film is undoubtedly the cast, all of whom are perfect matches for their part. The only slight mismatch is Sheedy, who gets better as the film goes on but begins as one of the more strangely animated weirdos you’re ever going to see. One of the first things she does in the film is go to town biting her nails, but I’ve had nail-biting problems most of my life and she’s doing it all wrong. (It doesn’t help that the sound mixer gives it all the volume of a gunshot.) Once she opens her mouth we learn there’s a bit more to her than her squirrely physical movements, and eventually I bought her as “the basket case.”

The most vocal of the group is Judd Nelson’s “criminal,” and he comes in guns-a-blazing from the start. He’s arguably the catalyst for all the life-sharing the group does over the course of the day, as he does all he can to annoy the living crap out of everyone in the room. This may go against my previous rant on Principal Vernon, but I thought Nelson’s best scene was his argument that winds up getting him a couple more months of non-stop detention. While the character he’s talking to is absurd, we learn a lot about Nelson in his incessant refusal to back down from an authority figure. He always needs to be the most powerful person in the room, and he will not end any conversation until he comes out on top. The rest of his interactions with Vernon are less successful, including the borderline embarrassing scene in which the principal basically challenges him to a fight. However, that isn’t Nelson’s fault.

There are plenty of other flaws to be found in the material, but the thing that most annoyed me about The Breakfast Club was Hughes’ use of music. It is in this area that he always seemed intent on using the most ’80s selections available, and though it must have worked like a charm at the time it completely hurts the film almost thirty years later. However, the genre of music the film uses in only half the problem. Back to the Future uses Huey Lewis and the News and that film still works wonders. What really hurts Hughes’ films is the way in which he uses music. During the scenes in which our gang is running around the school’s hallways trying to avoid Principal Vernon, the soundtrack blares Wang Chung’s “Fire in the Twilight,” which features the lyrics “Hot on the run from the grip of the power game,” which is a bit on the nose. Even more obvious is the dance number set to Karla DeVito’s “We Are Not Alone,” which essentially recites the film’s themes in a handy synth-pop package. There are also the countless other moments of intense conversation that would have played much better to a silent soundtrack. Instead, Hughes frustratingly chooses to pile on the score and remove a lot of the impact. The use of music doesn’t complement The Breakfast Club; it overtakes it.

Still, there’s no denying Hughes’ intentions are always good. As frustrating as I found this film, it’s tough to get angry at a film that wants to throw a bunch of stereotypes in a room, have them spill their guts and ultimately expose that they’re all cut from the same cloth. Somewhat inevitably, it just doesn’t work as well today as it obviously did back then. The Breakfast Club (and the entire John Hughes phenomenon as a whole) was a simple case of the right people coming together at the right time and making something that resonated deeply with an entire generation. If you are one of these people that loved this movie back when it came out, I wish to take nothing away from you. There are undoubtedly tons of movies I love today that won’t age well, and that’s fine. We’ll always love our childhood favorites, and that is the way it’s supposed to be. The ’80s and John Hughes are destined to be linked forever, and I have nothing but respect for anyone able to connect so completely with their target audience. The Breakfast Club is by no means Hughes’ best film, but it is the one that most completely encapsulates all he aimed for in his prolific career.

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