You remember this girl, right? No? Well, she was the Meg Ryan of the 80’s, only Molly Ringwald specialized in teen romance movies, instead of romance movies opposite Tom Hanks. Ringwald was Claire “The Princess” from The Breakfast Club, Andy from Pretty in Pink, and Samantha Baker from Sixteen Candles. After that…well, that’s basically it. I can’t say that I’m a particular fan of hers, since I only liked one of the most popular three movies she’s been in:
First off, this movie is not about breakfast at all. It’s about five kids: The Athlete, The Princess, The Hoodlum, The Geek, and The Basket Case. All five of them end up in Saturday detention together without anything in common, but by the end of the day, they have bared their souls to each other.
This is one of my favorite movies. It has humor, drama, and hilarious dialogue (Does Barry Manilow know you raid his wardrobe?). It does have its weird moments, though. To this day, I can’t figure out why all the kids decided to smoke marijuana in the library. ALL of them (except The Basket Case)! Even Brian, the quiet, nerdy boy and the intense wrestler, who should be watching what he puts into his body! The clouds of marijuana smoke are filling entire rooms and the kids all get high. It’s like the lesson is: Unless you are a basket case, you should be smoking marijuana. Even nerds and dedicated wrestlers do it!
Yeah, I guess the filmmakers did this to symbolize how everyone was opening up and relating to each other (and a lot of teenagers experiment with drugs like this), but the whole thing was just strange.
Another part I find strange is the part is the teacher, who is supposed to be watching the kids and is a pretty standard authority figure until this point in the movie, is practically begging the hoodlum to hit him, telling him that he wants him to do it and that he’ll get him kicked out once and for all. All he needed was a strike of lightning in the background and a cat to stroke to become the complete embodiment of evil.
In fact, all the adults in this movie are “evil”. They demand the impossible with either grades or athletics, put their kids in the middle of their messy divorce, ignore their kids, or burn them with cigarettes and physically and emotionally abuse them. In fact, in this movie, one of the kids says “When you grow up, you die.”
And the other part of the movie I find strange is the ending. Yeah, it’s a nice fairy tale ending and everything, but it was just weird. Almost everyone ends up with someone. The Hoodlum and The Princess make out on her dad (the King’s?) car (while it’s occupied by her father), she gives him one of her diamond earrings, then lets him walk home alone. The Athlete and The Basket Case kiss, too, but The Athlete only began to notice her after The Basket Case is given a makeover by The Princess. I always felt bad for The Nerd, who had to drive away with his family without kissing anybody. Couldn’t the filmmakers just have added another girl for him to smooch at the end? I mean, he’s nicer than the Hoodlum kid, shouldn’t he get a kiss?
One thing that was also strange, yet totally awesome and iconic, was the famous dance sequence. Who could forget that? It is spoofed quite often, as shown here in this JC Penney commercial.
This movie shows us that even though those kids were labeled as only one thing, they were more complex than that. At least that’s what they discovered when they actually talked to each other.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear a ruckus in the other room.
