What happens when five strangers end up together in Saturday detention? Badass posturing, gleeful misbehavior, and a potent dose of angst. With this exuberant, disarmingly candid film, writer-director John Hughes established himself as the bard of American youth, vividly and empathetically capturing how teenagers hang out, act up, and goof off. The Breakfast Club brings together an assortment of adolescent archetypes—the uptight popular girl (Molly Ringwald), the stoic jock (Emilio Estevez), the foulmouthed rebel (Judd Nelson), the virginal bookworm (Anthony Michael Hall), and the kooky recluse (Ally Sheedy)—and watches them shed their personae and emerge into unlikely friendships. With its highly quotable dialogue and star-making performances, this exploration of the trials of adolescence became an era-defining pop-culture phenomenon, one whose influence now spans generations.