Film review: The Breakfast Club (1985), written and directed by John Hughes

It’s Saturday, and a bunch of youngsters are forced to spend the day in detention in the school library, occasionally supervised by teacher Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason), when he’s not hanging out with the janitor (John Kapelos).

There’s the Andrew the jock (Emilio Estevez), nerdy Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), troublemaker John (Judd Nelson), queen bee Claire (Molly Ringwald), and outsider Allison (Ally Sheedy). Five teenagers with very different outlooks in life forced together.

When the grown-ups are away, and they get talking to each other, are they really all that different from each other?

The Breakfast Club is one of those iconic 1980s films that a lot of people hold in very high regard. And so they should, because it’s a good film. Who knew detention could be so much fun? All the characters do an awful lot of growing up in a short amount of time, and I’d like to think they stay friends afterwards, even though the socialising norms in high school says they shouldn’t even deign to talk to each other.

I think everyone can find a piece of themselves in either of these characters, and perhaps that’s why the film is still worth talking about today. It’s touching, and it tells us that no matter how we might appear within our own circle of friends, we might be someone completely different in another setting, with another group of people. Are we not always trying to be someone we’re not, just to fit in?

4.5 out of 5 staircases.