Release Year: 1985

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director: John Hughes

Writer: John Hughes

Stars: Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald

Five high school stereotypes walk into a... library?

Yeah, this sounds like the start of a bad joke, but instead, it's the start of a really good movie. It's the story of a jock, a nerd, a juvenile delinquent, a rich, popular girl, and a weird girl who transcend their respective stereotypes and learn to get along.

Meet 1985's The Breakfast Club.

Sound like a bunch of cliches?

You got it. This movie gave birth to cliches... and several thousand dorm room posters.

The movie was written and directed by John Hughes, the guy who flipped teen movies into production as easily as if they had been pancakes. Prior to The Breakfast Club, Hughes had already created a hit with Sixteen Candles in 1984 (teaching a generation to recite the line "What's happenin', hot stuff?"), but with The Breakfast Club, he was ready to go deep into a world of dads burning sons with cigars and teens bullying each other… before making sure everything turned out all right in the end. 

Sixteen Candles was light and frothy and rated PG. The Breakfast Club dropped lots of F-bombs and dealt with Serious Issues affecting the '80s teen.

After going through a relatively thrifty production, The Breakfast Club became a smash hit, securing the cast's reputations as pop cultural icons: The stars of The Breakfast Club became a hard-partying unit known as the "Brat Pack" (riffing off Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack").

So, kick back, relax, play Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)," and walk toward an imaginary camera with a triumphant fist in the air. 

You're about to visit (or revisit, because this movie can't be seen too many times) the greatest teen movie ever made.

You thought this movie was just fun: a stoned wrestler doing cartwheels, a girl using her dandruff to create snow in a drawing, a juvenile delinquent who gets a carton of cigarettes for Christmas, a queen bee putting on lipstick with her cleavage, and an academic-minded young man who fails to make a workable elephant-lamp.

But, wait—it turns out at the end there's a moral lesson. 

Yep, you were duped.

The Breakfast Club isn't just about teens smoking pot in the school library and yelling profanities at the supervising teacher (although both of those things do happen): It's about the importance of not judging people. 

But this ain't another after-school special—although it is special, and it takes place after school (ish).

Presumably, you don't want to be an awful person. (We really have your number, huh?) So the next time you see an Anthony Michael Hall or Ally Sheedy-type character trotting down the hall, don't immediately spit in their faces and trample them in the dust. Imagine: They might be just like you on the inside—restless, anguished, hilarious, and mad at mom and dad.

(And if you are an Anthony Michael Hall or Ally Sheedy-type character, we guess you're supposed to imagine that the people spitting in your face and trampling you in the dust also possess some vestige of humanity and/or daddy issues.)

To sum up the movie's message: Don't be an unreflective walking stereotype. Be a reflective walking stereotype.

Or better yet, don't be a stereotype at all.

The Film Buff Version

As a budding amateur film historian, you should study this movie as a classic, trendsetting example of the Teen Movie.

The secret to John Hughes's success was looking at the world the way teenagers do. Earlier teen movies tended to approach the equation from a grown-up perspective; in other words, "stop being foolish; your angst really isn't all that important." (There were a few exceptions, of course, like Rebel Without a Cause.) Hughes's Sixteen Candles, on the other hand, said, "when you're sixteen and they forget your birthday, it really does feel like the end of the world." That empathy and understanding helped make The Breakfast Club the classic it is today. 

So go ahead and reflect on how it explores teenage stereotypes, how other movies have copied it (perhaps less effectively), and how it catered to its younger audience (a David Bowie quote! Reckless drug use!).

Feel free to deconstruct it.