#moly ringwald

KJ is really missing Luke today. 

The adolescent angst of The Breakfast Club still resonates 30 years later

Much is made of the five leads as generic stereotypes: Brain, Beauty, Jock, Rebel, Basket Case. In classic Hughes fashion, the Beauty and Jock are at the top of the high-school structure, the others further down the ladder. But the fact that “custodial artist” Carl is seen in a brief shot at the beginning of the movie as a former high school star is a sly nod to what Hughes thinks of people who peak in high school. (Ferris Bueller is the only Hughes hero who’s popular with his classmates.)

The Breakfast Club systematically breaks down these social barriers, first by pointing out the group’s differences—as seen in their lunches, for instance, which range from sushi to a Cap’n Crunch sandwich—then their similarities. They share social fears. They all acted out their general dissatisfaction to wind up in all-day detention, even Allison, who only wandered in out of boredom. Moments like pot-fueled dancing and examining each other’s wallets help bond the kids together, along with their alignment against out-of-touch principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason). The lines from Brian’s letter that close the movie reinforce how pointless and painful stereotypes can be.

But what resonates most from a later viewing of The Breakfast Club, and the main thing these five have in common, is how their parents cast a pall over the entire proceedings. Parents only appear tangentially in Hughes’ other teen movies, with nice-guy dads like Paul Dooley and Harry Dean Stanton sitting in for some heartfelt one-to-ones with Molly Ringwald. In The Breakfast Club, viewers only briefly see the parents dropping the kids off in the morning. But much of what the kids talk about, and what appears to upset them most, is how they deal with their parental units.