How ‘The Breakfast Club’ has curdled, after 40 years

The John Hughes high school classic from 1985 hasn’t held up as well as I thought.

The Breakfast Club, the high school drama directed by John Hughes in 1985, is on the short list of the movies that I’ve seen the most times in my life.

It was never one of my favorite movies or anything, but I feel like I watched it dozens of times in high school and college, on overnight sleep-ins, on bus rides, and in dorm rooms. It’s one of those films that seemingly every Gen Xer owned on VHS and DVD throughout the 1990s, and most of them could never resist the temptation to pop it on.

I’ve long been aware that there are certain critiques about the movie not aging well- some of them well-articulated by the movie’s star, Molly Ringwald, in a #MeToo-era op-ed in 2018. There’s some stuff in the film that’s very shocking to modern-day eyes, although the howlers in another Ringwald/Hughes collaboration, 1984’s Sixteen Candles, are way worse, starting with Long-Duk Dong and Anthony Michael Hall’s turn as a pint-sized sexual harasser.

I did my first rewatch of The Breakfast Club in quite a few years to write this piece, as the film is turning 40 years old this week (it opened nationwide on February 15, 1985). It’s one of those movies where I can’t even hear the title without thinking of the song that kicks it off, Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”

Now it may be that I’m used to hearing all of the famous lines, whether in the movie itself or quoted by other people, and I’ve sort of internalized Ringwald’s critique, as well as the numerous memoirs, documentaries, and other ancillary cultural material about the Brat Pack.

But even beyond all that… I concluded from this latest watch that the movie is just sort of full of shit, and was never quite as profound as it, and we, all thought it was.

I probably don’t have to tell you the premise of The Breakfast Club, but just in case: The entire movie is set on a single Saturday, where five high school students are serving a day of detention. They all come from different backgrounds and cliques and would have had little reason to interact previously. There’s popular girl Claire (Ringwald), bad boy Bender (Judd Nelson), jock Andrew (Emilio Estevez) nerd Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), and awkward Allison (Ally Sheedy). Throughout, they’re picked on by the vice principal (Paul Gleason) who’s a bit militaristic and fascistic for a suburban high school vice principal in 1985.

And that’s just the start of the details that don’t quite add up, and detract from any essential truths the film is trying to tell.