Welcome back to another 80s movie review! This week we will be talking about The Breakfast Club, a very well-known 80s’ movie directed and produced by John Hughes. He made other popular movies like Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, and Home Alone. These movies consist of lots of crazy, fun scenes, and The Breakfast Club is no different.

Overview:

The Breakfast Club has 5 Main Characters, Claire, Andrew, John, Brian, and Alice. The five high school students arrive at school on Saturday morning for 9-hour detention. As the day goes on, they learn more and more about each other. They all have a lot of things in common; they’re all struggling in some way and need to talk it out. In the end, they all become friends and don’t care about their school social classes anymore.

I really liked how this movie incorporated dancing and singing scenes. No one was bullying or being bullied, all of the characters seemed like best friends during these scenes. Everyone looked like they were genuinely having fun. I also liked how all of the characters built relationships throughout the movie. They’re all very harsh to each other in the first few scenes, by the end their attitudes toward each other had shifted.

My Concerns:

Now, most parts of this movie are light-hearted and funny, but I feel that other factors need to be considered—like the use of slurs, sexual harassment, and peer pressure. 

There are three scenes where slurs are used. Slurs are words that are used to oppress people within certain minorities, they’re super harmful. These words were used so casually like it was nothing; I thought it was disgusting. Whenever slurs are used by individuals who aren’t in these communities, it makes the meaning of these words seem not as bad as they actually are. I felt as if it was very disrespectful and insensitive to use these words in this film. My view on the movie would’ve been a bit more positive if these slurs weren’t in the movie.

There are also multiple examples of sexual harassment in this film. John harasses Claire throughout the movie, asking her inappropriate questions and touching her. It was shown that she was obviously very uncomfortable with this behavior, but her classmates did nothing to help. These scenes depict how the treatment of women wasn’t very important, Andrew tried to stick up for her, but most of the time, they just watched it happen. This is different from today, things like this definitely do still happen, but someone is more likely to stand up and diffuse situations like these.

Claire was also peer pressured to say her personal business after she repeatedly said no. This was a bit infuriating because no one was there to step in for her. Though it didn’t affect her much, peer pressure can be very harmful. Peer pressure can cause low self-esteem, fear of rejection, and increased stress. In this particular scene, we could see two of the three effects. Claire was visibly stressed and didn’t want to seem “uncool” in front of everyone. This scene definitely shows how teenagers feel when being pressured, doing something they obviously didn’t want to do in the first place. 

Overall Thoughts:

This film definitely has its flaws, and it’s important to talk about and evaluate them. We can’t change the past, but we can prevent things from happening. I enjoy this movie moderately; however, I dislike it because it normalized very serious issues. I would give this movie a 4.5/10; it was interesting but problematic. The Breakfast Club is canceled in my book and not something I’ll be watching again.