“The classic 80s film, The Breakfast Club strands five archetypal teenagers — played by Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy — in a high school library for an all-day detention session. Left to their own devices, the kids move beyond an initial hostility to work through their anxieties with frankness and mutual recognition.
“Directed by John Hughes, the film sidesteps all the clichés of the teensploitation movie — no homecoming dance, no keg party, no nudity, no football game. Sandwiched between Hughes' equally beloved directorial efforts Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club presented as something weightier: a sincere group-therapy drama, with delinquents turned into soul-searchers by virtue of their daylong confinement and a dearth of distractions.
“Hughes' screenplay presents a series of straw-man stereotypes ("the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal") then takes 90 minutes to easily dismantle them. The lessons seem clear: People are more complicated than you give them credit for, and deep down, everybody feels like an outsider.” - The LA Times