The Breakfast Club (DVD)

File this one under the category of "Over-Hyped and Underwhelming."

Because multiple sources have described The Breakfast Club as "the quintessential teen movie," I've chosen to review it for this blog...despite that the library houses it in the Adult section due to an "R" rating (This rating is mainly because of the profanity sprinkled throughout the dialogue. There's also some drug and alcohol references, but nothing I'd consider excessive. Such things are practically pedestrian in today's teen films. The movie would likely be PG-13, if it were rated by today's more lax standards). It is this mature rating that prevented me from being permitted to watch the film while still a teenager. And, in the years since, I supposed it just slipped under my multi-media radar. 

However, in the last few books I've read, the movie was referenced no fewer than three times. My curiosity finally getting the better of me, I checked it out and watched it for the first time last night. 

And I was highly disappointed. Because, plot-wise, nothing really happens. This "Nothing" concept may have worked for Seinfeld. It did not work for The Breakfast Club.

To sum up: Five teens representing five stereotypes (The Jock, The Popular Kid, The Loser, The Brain, The Goth) are shut in the school library for an all-day detention. They sleep, they fight-physically and verbally, they confess their deepest secrets, and they eventually become friends. Honestly, it's like a setup for a bad psychological experiment to test what happens when complete strangers are locked up together and forced to interact without cell phones or any other means of entertaining themselves (of course, the characters ARE in a library, which, in my humble opinion, would be plenty entertaining). Or the setup for a bad joke ("A Jock, A Brain, and Goth walked into a library..."). Or a bad horror film (A Zombie Apocalypse would have improved the movie immensely). 

My none-to-stellar reaction is likely due, at least in part, to the movie being so over-hyped. It's happened before. Also, John Hughes, the director who gave us such classic gems as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, and the Home Alone trilogy, is pretty much made of awesome. So I was expecting something spectacular. Something life-changing. Something so amazing that it rearranged the stars, caused the planets to align, and made cats and dogs put aside their differences and start a fool-proof campaign for world peace. What I got was something so dull I had to force myself to keep watching. 

In short: To paraphrase my favorite pop culture feline, Grumpy Cat, "I watched The Breakfast Club once. It was awful." 

Well, not awful. Just...really...boring.

And p.s. Bart Simpson's delivery of the line "Eat my shorts" was far superior to Judd Nelson's. I'm just saying.

--AJB