The Breakfast Club

 Hello! This week I watched The Breakfast Club, released in 1985.

The basic premise is that five high school students show up to a Saturday day long detention, all established as different stereotypes. One is a spoiled preppy princess, one is a jock, one is a nerd, one is a "basket case girl," and one is a bad boy criminal. Despite all of them socializing and living in different circles, they're stuck together for a day, which first causes high tension, and then leads to revelations about each other and bonds being formed. 

I would say the movie's about the teen struggle of wanting to be seen past their stereotype or perceived identity by others. While at first, the characters are apprehensive and even hostile to each other, they learn how they're more similar to each other than they thought, but they also discuss how they still wouldn't be able to interact with each other at school, because they feel trapped in a social system. There is also a teacher character who is kind of the antagonist in the movie, and he frequently expresses his dissatisfaction and disgust with the newest generation. Since this movie became an immensely popular film for teens, I'm sure the teacher resonated with many of them as an expression of the disappoint from older generations that was especially prevalent at the time.

I think the film also became popular because of its interesting style of essentially being a dialogue-only movie. The students never leave the school the entire time, nothing extraordinary happens, and they don't decide to start a revolt in their grade to uproot the social class. They just fight, laugh, dance, discuss their feelings, and connect, which gives it a real genuine feel. That was my favorite aspect of this film.

I do have a couple problems with it though. First of all, they decided to romantically pair off the "basket case girl" and the jock together, as well as the spoiled princess and the bad boy criminal (which leaves the nerd all alone.) Like, its fine I guess, but its super rushed, and I think I would've enjoyed it more if everybody had stayed platonic. I feel like the whole point of the movie was to see past stereotypes and appreciate someone for who they really are, and having them get romantically involved almost implies that they were willing to get past each other's weirdness just for the sake of kissing someone, if that makes any sense. And that leads me to another complaint, which is about the "basket case girl." She is nonverbal for a lot of the film, wears shabby clothing and dark eye makeup, and when she does speak, it's usually some off-kilter or strange statement. Of course, they still come to accept her, but the end of her "arc" happens when the princess character changes her makeup and clothes, and makes her look preppy instead. When this transformation occurs, that's when the jock falls for her, which to me, like goes against the whole point of the movie. Also a warning: there's like multiple sexual harassment scenes between the bad boy and the princess that are played off as funny or like romantic, which is really uncomfortable. And the F slur is used, so just be wary. This is definitely an 80s film! But overall, I enjoyed it, so I would recommend checking it out!