The Breakfast Club (1985)
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Five teenagers from different high school cliques must navigate a day of detention together and discover their common ground.
The story
On Saturday, March 24, 1984, five students at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois, report for an all-day detention. The group includes a socially awkward nerd, a jock, a shy loner, a popular girl, and a rebellious delinquent. They are overseen by their authoritarian vice principal, Richard Vernon, who demands they remain in their seats and write a one-thousand-word essay on their identities. As the day progresses, the students are forced to confront their different social standings and the pressures of their respective lives, eventually beginning to look past their initial stereotypes to find commonalities in their experiences.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
During a Saturday detention at Shermer High School, five students—Brian, Andrew, Allison, Claire, and John—are tasked by Vice Principal Vernon to write essays about themselves. While the delinquent Bender frequently defies Vernon's rules, the group eventually begins to bond. They share personal struggles: Claire deals with intense peer pressure; Bender faces physical abuse from his father; Andrew is pressured by his father to succeed in wrestling; Brian faces extreme academic pressure; and Allison deals with neglectful parents. They eventually realize they share common anxieties regarding their identities and relationships. The students eventually collaborate on a single essay for the class. In the final moments, the students share brief romantic moments before departing. The film ends with the students acknowledging they will view each other differently, while the final essay submitted to Vernon lists them by their archetypes: a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.
- First release year
- 1985
- Runtime (minutes)
- 97
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- John Hughes
- Writers
- John Hughes · writer
- Cast and characters
- Emilio Estevez · Andrew Clark; Paul Gleason · Richard Vernon; Anthony Michael Hall · Brian Johnson; Judd Nelson · John Bender; Molly Ringwald · Claire Standish; Ally Sheedy · Allison Reynolds
- Genres
- comedy-drama; coming-of-age
- Themes
- struggle to be understood; peer pressure; parental expectations; stereotyping
- Tone and mood
- serious; confessional
- Setting
- Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois in 1984
- Premise and plot tags
- high school; detention; teenagers
- Reception
- The film received acclaim from critics, who consider it to be one of Hughes's most memorable and recognized works, and is considered one of the cornerstone films of the 1980s.
- Reported review scores
- Metacritic · score: 66 · scale: 100 · review count: 25
- Awards and nominations
- Silver Bucket of Excellence Award · MTV Movie Awards · 2005 · win
- Production trivia
- The title was originally The Lunch Bunch.; The film was shot at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, Illinois.; The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2016.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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