DVD Reviews

The Breakfast Club - Blu-ray Review

By Jeff Swindoll Aug 20, 2010, 14:33 GMT

They were five students with nothing in common, faced with spending a Saturday detention together in their high school library. At 7 a.m., they had nothing to say, but by 4 p.m. they had bared their souls to each other and become good friends. John Hughes, creator of the critically acclaimed "Sixteen Candles", wrote, directed and produced this hilarious and often touching comedy starring Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd ...more

Don’t’ you forget about me. Director John Hughes spoke to a generation. His untimely passing put that same generation into a reflective mood and maybe a wish to cinematically revisit high school. So journey back to yesteryear with the Brat Pack… in the future technology of Blu-ray.

Since 1998, Beloit College in Wisconsin publishes the Mindset List. It gives perspective to us old fogies as to what the current entering college freshmen class knows culturally. For example, the graduating class of 2014 (most born in 1992) don’t know how to write in cursive, Nirvana is on the oldies station (I lament that is where I have to listen to all the hot tunes of my youth), rely on their cellphones for the time and not wristwatches, and think of Clint Eastwood as a sensitive director and not Dirty Harry.

I’d also wager that they don’t know who the Breakfast Club is, who composed the Brat Pack or even what that is, or who John Hughes was. “Was” might be the best description as the writer/director died of a sudden heart attack in 2009 at an extremely young age of 59 (though that Class of 2014 might think that an old age, the older I get the younger ages sound). Hughes was in some ways the eternal youth since he was much older than a high-school kid when he began films that would speak to generations of them.

Shermer High School is empty on a Saturday. However, there are five students who have given up their day off by their bad behavior. John Bender (Judd Nelson), Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez), Clair Standish (Molly Ringwald), Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy), and Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) have been assigned weekend detention with Principal Vernon (Paul Gleason).

Vernon has the kids sequestered in the school library for nine hours and assigns them a one-thousand word essay on who they think they are and leaves, checking on them occasionally. The group seemingly has nothing in common, but by the time they get out of detention they’ll discover that they have more in common than they first imagined.

It seems that every teen film after the Breakfast Club tried to copy it. Maybe it just seemed that way since it struck a nerve with its intended audience and became “the” movie.

Hughes scored with 1984’s Sixteen Candles and following it up with this film in 1985 (as well as some others) seemed to solidly cement him in minds of the youth of this timeframe. The Breakfast Club seemed to speak to that generation.

The characters represented a series of archetypes of high school life (the pretty girl, bad boy, geek, odd girl) and the bringing of them all together seems a “consummation devoutly to be wished.” It would also give birth to a group of young actors and partiers that would be dubbed the Brat Pack.

The tabloid following of these partying stars may have given some truck to our current celebrity obsessions, certainly the garishness of it. Amusingly only Hall and Ringwald were actually of high school age with the rest being over twenty and playing younger. Certainly the film is one of the best high school movies.

Supposedly the late Hughes have a videotape copy of deleted and extended scenes, but sadly none of that footage shows up on this new release.

The Breakfast Club is presented in a 1080p high definition transfer (1.85:1). Special features include a commentary with Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall, the 51 minute “Sincerely Yours” that looks back at the film as well as the legacy of it, the 5 minute “Most Convenient Definitions” that talks about the Brat Pack, and the 2 minute theatrical trailer.

All are presented in standard definition. They all also hail from the 2008 DVD edition so it would’ve been nice to see a tribute to Hughes or something new.

Some of the players may be gone (Gleason and Hughes) or older (the Brat Pack), but the Breakfast Club remains one of the best high school movies. Too bad that more tributary couldn’t have been put into the film or even those fabled deleted scenes, but the Blu-ray guarantees that we won’t forget about the film or its director till the next release.