A Belated Breakfast

I think I’ve said this a few times before and like a broken record I’ll say it again, I’m not the most up-to-date kind of guy in the terms of, well everything. It takes me longer to do things than everyone else, much much longer. For a while during the first year of school I couldn’t pronounce my y’s and l’s and while every other kid said yellow I said nellow. If I’m honest I still don’t know if I’m pronouncing failure and volume correctly and I‘m too scared to ask for fear of looking like an idiot. I couldn’t swim until I was sixteen, I didn’t have a mobile phone until I was seventeen (I didn’t receive a phone call until I was eighteen), I didn’t pass my driving test until I was nineteen, I still throw like a girl (one who can’t throw very well), and until yesterday I had never seen The Breakfast Club.
I’m never the first in line for anything other than a party which I will always be unfashionably early to, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s taken this long to see The Breakfast Club. You might think that I’m prioritising the wrong things in life and you would be exactly right, I have a research report to write and my absolute hatred of it has led me to write about a 25 year old film, thus proving I cannot do anything on time. I couldn’t even grow punctually, I was one of the smallest people in my school year, and while I’m not hobbit size I’m by no means Andre the Giant.
I have avoided John Hughes films ever since I saw Ferris Bueller’s day off (about five years ago), a film I absolutely hated. To me Ferris Bueller was a total prick, he was obnoxious and annoying, was awful to his friends, he got away with everything and we’re supposed to think “yeah, what a cool guy”, and if you don’t then you’re the real prick. Maybe I just didn’t get it, or the film was making fun of squares like me, but I judged John Hughes’ career on this film.
It wasn’t until I got into the films (and comics) of Kevin Smith (again quite late) that I started to realise the importance of John Hughes in the world of film and literature. Just as most bands I like today were influenced by The Smiths, many films I like have been influenced by Hughes. I am sure that if it weren’t for my unpleasant Ferris Bueller experience I would have already seen most John Hughes films like I already love so many Smiths songs.
It’s not as if I thought John Hughes was shit, I just thought I wouldn’t like his films, I still might not like the rest of them for that matter. With my casual fanboyism of Kevin Smith, indie films and even Dawson’s Creek I have learned a lot about John Hughes, and it has become more evident over the past year that the kind of films I like have been influenced by Hughes. So it was time to finally see the film they all talk about when they mention John Hughes, no not Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club.
Since the Bueller-incident I have gone on to garner a love for 80’s movies, the whole decade encapsulates everything I love about film, from Back to the Future, to Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, Stand by Me, The Goonies, The Karate Kid, Rain Man, it goes on. Films often reflect the eras they were made in, and while I’m no expert on American history (someone help me out here) I’m guessing the 80’s was a much better decade to live in than the 70’s (which saw such films as The Godfather and Taxi Driver).
This love of all things 80’s warmed me to The Breakfast Club, had I not seen so many 80’s movies this year I might not have been able to stomach it, it would have been too cheesy, too sentimental, too damn 80’s. It was all this but I didn’t mind, in fact it made it more enjoyable, these kind of films are almost a kind of escapism for me such is the difference in style between them and contemporary films. Aspects may be dated now but the themes are still relevant, and this would have no doubt been a film I would relate to and perhaps watch every day when I was still at school.

Unsurprisingly I related to Brian Johnson the most (we have the same birthday! OMGSPASM!), I was never a “brain” but I was most certainly a “dork”. The strength of this film is that while the characters are all archetypes of the typical school groups, everyone can relate to at least one character, if not all of them. What this film shows is that no matter where you stand in the school hierarchy, you all feel the same insecurities, the same pressure, and the same loneliness, and that the stereotypes of the social groups hide these feelings.
I’ve never seen a film so candid about adolescence, I grew up watching films like American Pie where the problem was not getting laid which seemed so far removed from my life at the time I couldn’t really relate to it, and when I did, it was something you could easily talk about. The problems the breakfast club have are ones you never usually talk about it, this makes their temporary friendship in the film the more significant, and one you can connect with.
Most films based in school are often skewed and don’t represent the true essence of what it’s like, take Twilight for example, a superficial smorgasbord of bullshit that is as believable as the concept of vampires. Other light hearted affairs show school to be this kooky balls out fun filled party and The Breakfast Club shows it as it really is, lonely.
It’s not all bad though, and as Judd Nelson pumps his fist it gives you the magical hope that you might just get the…oh wait I’m 23. Still, I loved this film, it’s my kind of thing, it’s not Back to the Future but what is? I suppose the moniker “better than Teen Wolf” will do. So now I begin a voyage of other John Hughes films, treading ever so carefully on the most treacherous of them all, Ferris Bueller’s day off. Expect a post soon about how freaking awesome I thought it was.