I first saw the 1985 film The Breakfast Club in my Film 101 class at university, which was a couple of years ago now, and I recently re-watched it on Blu-ray. My thoughts on it back then weren’t too much different to my thoughts on it now; this film is an interesting one.

This film focuses of five teenagers, each from differing social groups, who meet for the first time in detention on a Saturday morning, and it intelligently questions whether they are really as different as they appear to be on the surface.

What’s good about this film?

For me, there are 3 big stand-outs in this film:

the acting, which is fantastic the plot, which is very well thought out and thought-provoking it’s a quirky film, but the subject matter is very applicable today

All of the actors deliver performances that are so fantastic and believable. Even the crazy/weird janitor is believable. As a result of this, it is very easy to believe, at least early on in the film, that each character fits in to their given stereotype very well. Later in the film, the superb acting helps to bring home the point that maybe these supposedly very different teenagers may not be so different after all, though how each expresses and lives out their situation may vary.

The plot of this film is very well thought out and thought-provoking. The pacing of the film is also quite good, which helps to keep the film interesting and entertaining all the way from start to finish. There are many thought-provoking scenes in this film, particularly the scenes where the principal is having a go at John Bender, the tough-guy ‘criminal’ character, and the scene near the end of the film where the students are sharing information about themselves with each other.

This film is quite quirky, as it deals with 5 students who each fit into different social groups, questioning whether these social groups are all that different at their heart, though they may appear different on the surface. Often films use stereotypes or tropes as building blocks for their plot, and this film does, but not many films call those stereotypes into question. In fact, this is the only film I have seen that does that, and it does that superbly.

What’s bad about his film?

Honestly, I can’t think of many bad things to say about this film. The only bad thing about this film, if any, is that the scene near the end where all the students are dancing can seem a little bit random, but that isn’t anything too significant.

Summary

This is a film with a superb storyline and great performances from all the cast, with no major downsides.