The Breakfast Club Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov, December 30, 2017



The troublemakers

John Hughes directed a total of eight films during his career and the first four -- Sixteen Candles Weird Science , and Ferris Bueller's Day Off -- sum up perfectly just about everything that most folks believe made the '80s such a special decade. There is a very distinctive energy in these films and a type of authentic chemistry between their young characters that instantly make them irresistibly attractive.There is a rather long list of directors that were greatly influenced by Hughes' work and during the early '90s set out to produce similar films while operating in a different socio-cultural environment -- Cameron Crowe and Richard Linklater are at the very top of this list -- but the new films basically had only bits of what they needed to be equally good. There are two big reasons why this happened and they are interconnected. The first is that the proper setting for them essentially disappeared as the '80s ended. Indeed, as MTV grew bigger a lot of producers with deep pockets realized that the TV business now offered new and very lucrative opportunities for them to target teens and then create commercial product that would fill in the gaps that films like the ones that Hughes directed did, and they reacted quickly. The wild overcommercialization of MTV that ensued initiated a truly vicious cycle and less than a decade later many of the same producers actually completely reshaped its identity. So instead of promoting music videos and other content that focused on trends that originated within the music industry, MTV became a big platform for 'reality'-based shows and 'educational 'programming and in the process lost its role as a mirror that aimed to reflect the colorful world of its audience, which is precisely what Hughes' early films did. The second reason is the more obvious one, which is that no one could do what Hughes knew how to do so well. Hughes -- and this is arguably the biggest secret behind the brilliance of-- had a genuine connection with the characters of his films and understood perfectly their dilemmas, so he shot them in a way that made their experiences entertaining but also incredibly convincing. In fact, he did it so well that the same connection then became the foundation for a lasting bond between these characters and the folks that went to their local theater to see his films. Not convinced? Engage in a conversation anyone that sawwhen it opened theatrically and you will soon discover that this person vividly remembers how at least one of its characters accurately described most if not everything that he/she had experienced or was still going through in his/her life. By the early '90s, however, the commercial shift that is highlighted above had already produced an entirely different socio-cultural environment and with it manufactured demand for a completely different crop of teen films, and once this became obvious the roles that Hughes and a few others like him had during the '80s were basically forfeited to the typical dull Hollywood-based network-contracted script writers and show producers. It is what ignited the 'reality'-based TV craze.Instead of rehashing yet again the many big and small reasons whyis rightfully considered one of the very best teen films to emerge from the '80s, let's just quickly mention a couple of reasons why it might be great to revisit as this year comes to an end. At a time when so many young people are taught to retreat in 'safe spaces' where they can only hear the soothing echo of their own thoughts, this film actually very effectively argues that it is in their best interest to go in the exact opposite direction and in the process routinely reexamine their perceived strengths and weaknesses. There is also a wonderful and very appropriate for the current social climate message about true love and happiness, and how they can be discovered only by those that have the courage to drop the masks that they have used throughout their lives to hide real or fictional insecurities.