The 25th anniversary of The Breakfast Club (1985) was last week. Twenty-five years since a Brain, an Athlete, a Basket Case, a Princess, and a Criminal met up in Saturday detention to confront and ultimately shake off their respective stereotypes, not to mention get high, partake in an oddly-placed dance montage, and yell at each other a lot. It might seem a little dated after twenty-five years (don’t we all), but The Breakfast Club hasn’t lost any of its charm. It bears repeating: dance montage.
It is, of course, hard to pay tribute to The Breakfast Club without simultaneously acknowledging its beloved writer/director John Hughes, whose death last year at 59 shocked and saddened his fans. Hughes wrote and/or directed some of the most popular films of the 80’s and early 90’s, including Sixteen Candles (1984), Weird Science (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987). For the most part, the reason Hughes’s films were and remain so resonant with viewers can be summed up by one of his most well known characters: “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” Hughes understood that most of the important, funny, heartbreaking, and memorable stuff happened in the most mundane situations – detention, cutting class, or getting felt up by your grandmother on your 16th birthday.
