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So you’ve probably heard the storyline before – five students (the jock, the princess, the brain, the basket case, and the criminal) are sentenced to Saturday detention and come to realize that they are not so different afterall. This is “The Breakfast Club” in a nutshell – and while it does not go on to deliver some profound or deep meaning beyond this, it does succeed greatly in the simple statement it has set out to illustrate. And thus it is the relationships between characters and the characters themselves which sets this movie apart as one of the greatest 80’s teen flicks. The cast, later referred to as the Brat Pack, consists of Molly Ringwald as the princess, Emilio Esteves as the jock, Anthony Michael Hall as the brain, Ally Sheedy as the basket case, and Judd Nelson as the criminal. Standout performance goes to Judd Nelson, who’s portrayal of Bender is both wildly funny and jaw droppingly intense. Other highlights include Esteves' dance, Sheedy "snowing" on her picture, Hall's "Chicks cannot hold their smokes" line, and the many Nelson/Ringwald banterings. All in all, director and writer John Hughes, who also wrote classics like “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, manages to create a hilarious and emotionally potent comedy about a group of mis-matched students who begin as strangers and end as friends.
Some interesting tidbits:
- Molly Rinwald and Anthony Michael Smith were dating while the movie was being filmed.
- The role of Bender was originally given to Emilio Esteves, but when the role of Andrew could not be filled, Esteves was cast and Bender was given to Nelson (over John Cusack, the other contender for the role)
- The joke Bender starts while crawling through the ceiling has no punchline, it was merely ad-libbed by Judd Nelson.
- John Hughes plays Brian’s dad at the end.
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