The Breakfast Club (1985)

Somehow I had never seen The Breakfast Club before. I do however have kind of a funny story vaguely related to the movie. Some years ago my nephew got really into chess and my mom remembered that my dad had kind of a fancy chess set and asked him to get it out of storage to show their grandson. My dad claimed he did not remember this set, perhaps because he didn't want to look for it. Well a year or so after he died we finally found it in the attic. It had been boxed up and wrapped in newspaper, but not from our family's 1987 movie from Utah to Idaho, no from an earler 1985 move from our first house in South Jordan to the second. The newspaper that it had been wrapped in was a February 1985 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune which contains stories about Reagans State of the Union Address and Bill Clintons democratic response to it, as well as a positive review for The Breakfast Club.

Like the paper before me I to must give The Breakfast Club a positive review. Made during that period where John Hughes could do no wrong The Breakfast Club tells the story of five kids of different high school types, jock, nerd, princess, criminal and basket case, who spend a Saturday detention together and bond, something their respective cliques would not have allowed in a weekday high school setting. Weightier then the typical high school movie fair, The Breakfast Club has a been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." This is also the movie that the term "Brat Pack" owes it origin to, as a magazine story about the cast was the first to use the term, one that would later be spread to include that whole young crew of actors who made there name in John Hughes and similar movies of the 1980's. The Breakfast Club is rated R, which I had not expected it to be, but is probably approrate for children over 13. ***1/2