Summary The Breakfast Club

Summary The Breakfast Club

One of the most era defining and influential teen drama movies of all time let alone the 80s. The Breakfast Club came to represent a genre and launched the careers of its young stars, leading to a slew of new movies and the infamous “The Brat Pack”. The motion picture has become a cult classic and has had a remarkable influence on scores of coming-of-age films since then.

In summary The Breakfast Club follows the voyage of five teenagers (Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy) who have all landed themselves Saturday nine-hour detention and have to write an essay on why they were in detention. While not complete strangers, the five teenagers are all from a different cliques or social groups.

The main characters (the five teenagers) are all highly portrayed by their individual cliques, John Hughes the director sets them up as traditional high school stereotypes. There is the jock, wrestling star Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez); the most fashionable and popular girl in high school, Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald); the brain, typical nerd, Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall); the rebel without a cause, John Bender (Judd Nelson); and the outsider, Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy).

As the movie progresses, The kids pass the hours in a variety of ways, gradually they open up to each other and reveal their inner secrets. It comes forth that none of them communicates easily with their families, all are under enormous pressure from their fellow peers, are afraid of making the same mistakes as the adults around them and in addition each is beset by anxiety and fear about the future and how they fit in it.

In the end, collectively they come to terms with each other’s differences, learn to see past stereotypes and lean to except and actually like each other. However, despite these students becoming friends, the students are afraid that once the school detention is over, they will return to their very different cliques, lifestyles and never speak to each other again. The film ends with Brian’s’ letter being read by the principal and the students going back home after detention is over.

The Breakfast Club was a 1985 film written and directed by John Hughes, a legend in the teenager genre. The 5 principal actors in the flick ( Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy ) became part of the Brat Pack, a group of actors whose careers in the 1980s revolved around playing teens in well-liked pictures with one another. This group also included Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy and Demi Moore.

United States, 1985
Running Length: 1:37
MPAA Classification: R (Profanity, mature themes)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Paul Gleason, John Kapelos
Director: John Hughes
Producers: John Hughes, Ned Tanen
Screenplay: John Hughes
Cinematography: Thomas Del Ruth
U.S. Distributor: Universal Pictures