The Breakfast Club (1985)
Directed by John Hughes
Five high school students from different walks of life endure a Saturday detention under a power-hungry principal. The disparate group includes rebel John, princess Claire, outcast Allison, brainy Brian and Andrew, the jock. Each has a chance to tell his or her story, making the others see them a little differently -- and when the day ends, they question whether school will ever be the same.
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Like Lumet’s 12 Angry Men , the film is a tight ensemble stage play but operates more free-form: Lumet and his cinematographer, Boris Kaufman, sequentially changed focal lengths so the jury room looks smaller and smaller as the drama progresses.
If Hughes’ directorial debut, Sixteen Candles , was a muddled effort featuring the most nauseating racial stereotype since Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi ( Breakfast at Tiffany’s ), this picture benefits from remaining narrowly focused on the universality of the five archetypes as laid out by the film’s protagonist, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), “A brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess and a criminal.”
While the former category was hard-pressed to give birth to a vaguely watchable entry, quality was widely variable in the latter, spanning the spectrum from the dregs of Porky's to the top-notch entertainment of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Its continuing cult popularity is mystifying; as teen movies go, this is a long way off, say, Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Pretty in Pink.
Prior to Hughes’ work, the teen comedies of the 1970’s, like Porky’s and Animal House , banked on slapstick and softcore rather than meaningful dialogues.