Child Of The 1980's

I noticed John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club on Sky Movies the other day so thought I would watch it again to refresh my memory.  I had forgotten just how good this film is, but one new thing I noticed this time round is that this film must be one of The Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s favourite films.  Not only is one of the characters named Bender (as in the robot from Futurama) but he also utters the phrase “Eat my shorts“, a phrase popular with a young yellow skinned fellow named Bart…

Anyway, what’s the film about?  It’s set in a school on a Saturday morning.  Five of the pupils have been given detention and they have to sit it out in the school library writing an essay that describes who they think they are, a task set for them by teacher Richard Vernon, who is a bit dysfunctional himself it has to be said.

The five teenagers each fit neatly into a different stereotypical variety of High School student.  There’s the aforementioned John Bender (an off the rails lout), Andrew Clark (the sporty one), Claire Standish (one of the “popular” girls), Brian Johnson (the bookworm) and Allison Reynolds (the freakish one).

All in, five kids who under normal circumstances would probably never become friends.  Initially this is certainly the case, with Bender causing havoc and the rest of the teens getting annoyed by his antics.  Bender pushes things too far and is locked away from the others in a store cupboard by Vernon, but he soon escapes by crawling through the space above the suspended ceiling, which he promptly comes crashing through.  When Vernon comes to investigate the others find themselves covering for Bender, who is hiding underneath the desks.

The path to friendship initally sewn then, Bender talks the others into following him to his locker, where he gets his drug stash, and they head back to the library for a little smoke, which relaxes them all enough to bond further.  This leads to the five of them sitting together and talking about their lives, and they discover that whilst they all may be very different people, the concerns they have in their lives basically are the same – sex, friendship and their relationships with their parents.

The conversation ends with Brian asking whether come Monday morning they will all still be friends.  No one seems certain of this, but when the film ends with them leaving the school and being picked up by their parents you get the impression that maybe, just maybe, they will still be mates.

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This entry is filed under Films - Teens and was posted on April 15th, 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.