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Breakfast Club

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Submitted By kevi
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Jack Fischer

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Jason Tillis

April 19, 2013

Breakfast Club

The plot follows five students at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois as they report for Saturday detention. (Fun fact about the high school where the movie was filmed, its called Maine North High School, it is a public four-year high school located in Northbrook, Illinois, that’s the high school my father attended for all four years of schooling). The five teens that show up for Saturday detention are all different in many ways. The first, of the teens is Bender a trouble making punk rock kid who likes to give everyone a hard time. The second is Andrew a wrestler jock who doesn’t like to take crap from anyone. Third, is Brian a nerdy kid just trying to fit in with the rest of the group. Fourth, is Claire the popular rich princess that has to have her way and puts herself on a pedestal. Lastly, is Allison the weird girl who doesn’t talk much. They all think they are totally different and in completely different social groups, and at the start of the movie they are right. Bender the troublemaker is messing with everyone including the principle and all the kids don’t understand why he is doing this. All the kids seem to start to get over the fact that Bender will be doing this the whole time. The movie starts to progress when they seek out of the library and are disobeying Mr. Vernon’s rules. All the kids have there fun, but when the movie really starts to get down to its true purpose is when it really starts to get interesting. The main scene in the movie all the kids are sitting around in a circle talking and the talk starts to get deep. They all start to talk about the problems they are having with school and with their family life. Emotions fly and the kids butt heads at first but they all start to see that they are all somewhat alike. When the movie starts to conclude you can see how they worked out a lot of the problems that they have all had and the problems the teens had at school. In the case of Brian the nerd, he was so overwhelmed with school peers, grades, and his parents that he was ready to end his life. The movies point was to show that in all schools each kid is having a problem no matter what it is and it doesn’t matter what group or click you are in not to judge a person. In my opinion this is a must see movie for everyone. I was told to watch this movie by my father five years ago, and as soon as I watched it I have loved it ever sense. I was skeptical to watch the movie because it was so old, and in my experience in the past I didn’t like the older movies. I wasn’t crazy about the graphics and everything that was entitled with an old movie. Even though I had the thoughts about this movie I trusted my dad and gave the movie a try. I was so pleased with the movie I watched it again the following day. It was nice to see a movie that was made in 1985 keep up with the movies that were being made twenty-three years later. While enjoying a wonderful movie it also teaches you a lesson about stereotypes and hardships that kids everywhere are dealing with in high school. In the TV guide movie review section an unknown writer said “THE BREAKFAST CLUB, paradoxically, is one of the few teen-oriented films that truly addresses the troubles of its characters, yet it falters in dealing with the issues raised. Director-writer Hughes, though he gives the material a sense of fun and achieves several moments of genuine warmth, too often resorts to obvious clichés, stereotypes, and easy answers”. Besides the fact that John Hughes created a movie completely abstract from the norm of the movies in that era and started a new trend of movies everywhere. He gathered a wonderful cast of upcoming stars that would set the stage for some wonderful movies to come in the future. The stars Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy, who worked in eight Hughes films. Roger Ebert wrote in an article speaking about the young actors saying, “Some of those actors, freed from their confinement under Hughes, and later became known as the Brat Pack. Hughes took the teenagers seriously, and his films are distinctive for showing them as individuals with real hopes, ambitions, problems and behavior. Hughes says: “Kids are smart enough to know that most teenage movies are just exploiting them,” he told me on the set of "The Breakfast Club." “They’ll respond to a film about teenagers as people. [My] movies are about the beauty of just growing up”. After Hughes started these kids out with Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club he continued to be the premiere writer of the 80s and 90s coming out with a more hits such as Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Uncle Buck, and Christmas Vacation in the 80s. Then in the 90s coming out with even more hits like Home Alone, Beethoven, Dennis the Menace, Miracle on 34th Street, and 101 Dalmatians. I personally think that John Hughes is one of the best movie writers in history. He started a trend of teen movies that caught on quickly to every movie writer around. Roger Ebert again in his article says “Few directors have left a more distinctive or influential body of work than John Hughes. The creator of the modern American teenager film, made a group of films that are still watched and quoted today”. When it comes to John Hughes movies and a movie as popular and influential as The Breakfast Club it’s hard to think or talk about the negatives that practically all movies have, but with my research I came across some negative reviews. dierregi, Brussels says “Halfway through I was bored out of my mind. Everything felt so staged and stereotyped. Also, as someone else pointed out, the main message coming out strongly was quite negative: hate your parents because they don't "understand" you (meaning, the great genius you actually are - as all teenagers think they're so much better than grown ups in general and their parents in particular)”. Another review I found that had negative thoughts about the film were written by an unknown writer saying “after viewing the film, I am not certain if I would agree with all the lessons imparted in the flick. My main problem with the BC now is that all the parental figures spoke about in the movie seemed to be either abusive or neglectful. In hindsight, I think that was not a prudent message to send out”. I agree somewhat with what the writer is saying. You shouldn’t have all the kids in the film struggling with parental problems. In hindsight there are so many more problems high school students are dealing with that have nothing to do with their parents.
I can say I didn’t find any more negative reviews about the film and personally watching this movie many times I haven’t picked up on anything that I didn’t like or agree with. Yes, maybe I should have picked a different movie to write this paper about; one that I don’t agree with or like as much but I thought this movie was to good not to write about. The messages that John Hughes incorporates into his writings are to influential to pass up.

Work Cited Page http://movies.tvguide.com/the-breakfast-club/review/119286 http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/john-hughes-in-memory

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/?ref_=sr_1

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000455/?ref_=tt_ov_dr

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/6997/The-Breakfast-Club/overview

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