The Breakfast Club

I think The Breakfast Club is a good movie depicting adolescence, but it is far from timeless, and increasingly it suffers from the era it was produced in. The movie is a nice story in essence: five unknowing and unassuming high school students find themselves together through a series of separate events. Despite the fact that they all come from different social circles, they find it easy to relate to one another and become friends. Perhaps that story may have believable at the time, I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief, having updated information about the behavior of high school students. Most that I’ve interacted with, myself included, would be very unlikely to step outside themselves for long enough to form a bond with their peers. The most believable aspect about the whole story to me, is that by the end of the detention, and Monday in school, everyone will go back to their same routines, almost as if they are disregarding their weekend experience.

Though the movie’s theme of acceptance of oneself is still, and will always be, relevant, the other aspects of the film really become too unbelievable to hold my interest. After the rampant verbal and sexual abuse that Bender throws at Claire, she still falls for him in the end. All that a compulsively-lying kleptomaniac needed to be noticed by a jock was a makeover. At first, the film that tried to break-down high school expectations falls right back into the most basic of cliches (though to it’s credit, the film was probably popular enough to start a few cliches of its own).