The Breakfast Club (1985)
Director: John Hughes
Had I seen this before: Yes
"Ah, a classic!" said the librarian approvingly as I handed her this DVD case, finally giving me the bibliothecary approval that I crave. And she's not wrong--for starters, the disc she was handing me was from the Criterion Collection, meaning those specific arbiters of taste consider it an important film. And its cultural impact is undeniable--the references, the iconic images, the fact that I had only seen it once before but just thinking about the title of the movie immediately presses the button for Simple Minds on my mental jukebox. There are so many things that I admire about how it's put together, so many really great moments and character details and bits of acting that run the gamut from extremely funny to genuinely moving. All of these achievements are rare, and impressive. And for most of its runtime, I hate watching this movie. I hated watching this movie as a teenager and I hated watching it as a middle-aged person and I would be willing to bet that if for some reason I revisit it in my twilight years I will realize ten minutes in that for my blood pressure's sake I should have just put on Romy and Michele again instead. The thing that makes all of this truly maddening is that if I could surgically remove one (admittedly load-bearing) element, I think this might be a movie that I love?
Like many people, I have a complicated relationship with the work of John Hughes. Here are some John Hughes-penned films that I have a deep affection for, despite their flaws: Mr. Mom, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I actually re-watched National Lampoon's Vacation for the Southwest Summer series but decided I did not have the energy to defend liking it as much as I do and therefore didn't write a post about it. Clearly, I can locate that energy when I feel like it. Like I said: complicated. You'll notice that aside from (arguably) Ferris Bueller, that list does not include any of the classic "teen" movies of that era. Whether I was too young when they came out or I just don't mesh with that style or I was too put off by the more jarringly offensive elements, I'm not sure at this point, because this is the only one I have re-visited in about 25 years. That is unlikely to change any time soon (unless I convince myself that Pretty in Pink is a crucial entry in whatever hare-brained blog theme I'm attempting).
I will begin with the movie that I love: I'm a sucker for a well-done bottle episode, and this is the Hughes version of that. If you squint slightly and suddenly the movie could be a play? I'm in. Everyone being confined to one space means it's probably a movie comprised of characters talking to each other and nothing else--no special effects, no confusing time jumps or travel inconsistencies. No car chases. This particular empty high school is a wonderful set. It truly evokes the very specific feeling of being inside a school during off-hours. It also makes the stakes clear and simple when the detained students have to make it through the hallways and back to the library before they're caught, for example. Some of the best moments of the movie are when the characters are just quietly existing inside the beautiful two-story library where they are imprisoned for the day--Emilio Estevez playing with the strings of his hoodie, Ally Sheedy adding dandruff snow to her artwork, Anthony Michael Hall creating a walrus tusk with his pen.
Some of the chemistry amongst the cast works really well. Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, the only two actual teenagers in this movie (we will absolutely be returning to this issue) seem like 16-year-olds. The fact that she is a believable 10th grader is what saves the Claire character from being completely unbearable--she's sort of awful but she's also really young and sheltered and just generally clueless about what life is like for people who aren't her. This is, I think, both realistic--especially for the mid-80s--and not unforgivable in someone that age. Anthony Michael Hall, playing Brian the brain, is my overall MVP here. He's funny and sympathetic but also has a little bit of a backbone when he needs to. He's so deep in his own head, overwhelmed by an academic issue that seems minor to the point of being amusing from the outside, but is all-consuming to him in a way that adolescent problems often are. The fact that he looks like a kid makes everything land harder than it otherwise would. Also, if the movie trivia is correct that he ad libbed his response to the question "What do you need a fake ID for?" with "So I can vote," I mean...amazing. Perfect. When Claire and Brian talk to each other, despite being from different social circles, there is a natural teenage cadence that connects them and feels authentic.
So, the 23-year-olds. I know that casting 20-somethings as high schoolers is a sacred cinematic tradition, and this movie is certainly not unique in that regard. I get it--they have less acne, there aren't laws about how much time they have to spend in school, you don't have to deal with their parents. I do think having an entire cast of 20-somethings would be less discordant than having some high schoolers and some full grown adults, especially when the entire point of the movie is the interpersonal dynamics amongst them. Now, to be clear, I like the two 23-year-olds in question. Ally Sheedy, with her heavy eyeliner and her hair in her face, can pretty convincingly pass as, say, a senior. I used to think that her character was a little too quirky to be a real person, but now I have a daughter who is very quiet and spends a lot of time drawing and quite often responds to questions with...just...noises instead of words. She does not currently have dandruff or carry around a go-bag for attention, but...we'll see how high school goes. Emilio Estevez does not exactly look like a teenager, but he does have a bit of a baby-faced vulnerability and the fact that he seems to be the shortest cast member--including the girls--helps a bit. His energy sometimes tips a little toward "sympathetic teacher's assistant" when he talks to the younger kids, but that can mostly be attributed to his status as a star athlete, if you're feeling generous. When his and Sheedy's characters end up making goo goo eyes at each other, it's a slight stretch from a realistic high school social order perspective, but it absolutely makes sense visually--why shouldn't these two cutie 23-year-olds want to kiss each other? Nothing could be more inevitable.
And in the adult realm, Paul Gleason is terrific as the teacher-as-petty-dictator, all empty bad-cop bluster and private exhaustion. He's not exactly a realistic character, but he is a perfect movie character, and a good embodiment of what it feels like as a teenager to be under the authority of some random jerk. "Oh no," I thought for a moment, "am I older than the teacher?" and...not quite, but we're getting very close. I am older than the janitor, though. By quite a bit. Carl is in the prime of his life!
Anyway, that's all of the cast. And I'm done talking about this movie! Pretty great flick.
Sigh. Okay...fine. For me? Judd Nelson as John Bender is a problem. John Bender as written is a problem. Judd Nelson playing him exacerbates it. My personal temperament makes it nearly unbearable to sit through any of his scenes. That's an issue because he is arguably the main character of the film.
First, the me of it: I am a pathologically conflict-avoidant person, and I don't tend to enjoy watching people argue or be mean to each other. I've never been enamored of some of the more popular reality television franchises just because I strongly dislike yelling. That said, I'm not a child and I understand that interpersonal conflict is not only an important facet of the human experience, it is also necessary, in many cases, to create great art. I saw some comparisons of this movie to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, an excellent and wildly uncomfortable film that I have seen multiple times. I think the difference, from my perspective, is that watching WAoVW? is like watching a horror movie--holding your breath, wondering with both terror and perverse delight what these fascinatingly unhinged people (and, crucially, equally unhinged people) will do next, feeling a rush of relief when you are released at last from Hell's After-Dinner Party. Whereas most of the discussion around The Breakfast Club indicates that I, the audience member, am meant to find all this cruelty and misery and misogyny deeply relatable. Just teen thingz! I....really don't.
Second, the Bender of it: I understand the idea behind the Bender character. This is a hurt-people-hurt-people situation. He lashes out at everyone, but it's just a front to hide how broken and scared he is. His parents are abusive, he is without the financial means of his peers, he picks on Claire the most viciously because he's trying to get out ahead of her rejecting him, he's not being an asshole he's just being "honest," he voted for Trump because of economic anxiety, etc. And cycles of abuse are a real thing and this is a sort of person who exists in the world, but I find 90% of the time he is on screen excruciating. Because he's not just flippant and insulting--he's so disgustingly, unrelentingly vile to Claire specifically that it starts to become a question of whether John Hughes considered this a realistic version of playground taunting and I find it incredibly hard to take. Almost everything he says to her is either a sexual insult or a sexual threat, or something about her body in some way. One of his more nonsensical tirades is telling her that Claire is a "fat girl's name" and that eventually she's "gonna squeeze out a few puppies" and be overweight. Sir...what? (Apparently there was a cut scene where the janitor predicts where the students will all be in 30 years and says the jock will be married to a flight attendant "who will become fat after having kids" so I guess this was something Hughes was really hung up on? Yikes???) To be fair, the actual most nonsensical thing he calls her is "fuckin' Rapunzel," which is not particularly offensive, but...her hair is like one centimeter past her ears, my guy! You're just saying nonsense words!
Third, the Judd Nelson of it: I don't believe there is a version of this character that doesn't bother me, but I do believe that if the originally-cast John Cusack had played it I would have found him slightly more palatable in context. When this was filmed, Judd Nelson was 25 years old and looked 30. He's tall and hulking, thick neck and flaring nostrils, towering over the other cast members. He's physically intimidating on top of being extremely aggro. As a teenager I found him terrifying. As an adult I find him tiresome and still terrifying. He's nine years older than Molly Ringwald and only three years younger than the actor playing Carl the janitor. John Cusack, on the other hand, was 18 at the time of filming, two years older than Molly Ringwald, actually high-school-aged, tall but lanky. This was the Sixteen Candles, Better Off Dead era--he definitely looked like a teenager, and maybe even younger than his actual age. I think he would read more as "oh, this guy is just a dickhead" and less as "why is this escaped convict inside a high school, I'm worried he is going to brutalize someone." As it stands, all I can see when I watch this movie is a 25-year-old man explicitly threatening to rape a 16-year-old girl and sticking his face in her crotch against her will.
And then the happy ending where she decides she's into that!
I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's hard for me to come up with a character decision in any film that I relate to less than Claire kissing Bender at the end of this movie. It's baffling. It makes me feel genuinely queasy. It ruins the nice 23-year-old kisses. It ruins Brian's letter to the teacher. It ruins the "hey hey hey hey oooooh whoaaaa." It ruins the fist pump. It makes me hate watching this movie that I almost love.
Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Hey, I like all that black shit."
Is it under two hours: Yes
In conclusion: Based on the statistics regarding the distribution of disciplinary action against students in public schools, it seems very unlikely that 100% of students in detention on any given day would be white, but I guess this is an "adjusting for other factors" sort of sociological fable.
Cap'n Crunch and Pixy Stix Sandwich from The Twisted Mind of Ally Sheedy
I lean pretty heavily on IMDb trivia sometimes because it would be financially irresponsible to pay a researcher for these non-monetized blog posts and who knows how accurate any of it is, but I'm very willing to believe that the Cap'n Crunch sandwich that Allison compiles from her lunch sack was Ally Sheedy's contribution to her character because I'm not in the mood to give John Hughes any more credit than he deserves today. Pixy Stix are weirdly hard to find where I am, maybe tubes of loose flavored sugar are no longer in fashion? So I went with the next closest thing, which was a pineapple-flavored Crush drink mix. "Feels like a food crime," noted the 13-year-old. "Feels great."
Up next: Get in loser, it's another generational touchstone (not my generation, I have no generation)
