Retro Review: John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club Changed the Teen Movie Game Thirty Years Ago Today

Breakfast Club poster 1

When John Hughes died nearly six years ago, we all lost something pretty big. People throw around terms like “voice of a generation” all the time without merit, but I think that many people would openly and happily vouch for Hughes as the voice of my generation, me included. I have argued that he might have had the strongest 5-year run in film history before and I think that its hard to argue against it especially since so few filmmakers are able to match Hughes‘ output. While my favorite film of his oeuvre is Weird Science, for many reasons, but I don’t think there is any doubt that his most enduring film is The Breakfast Club. One of the crown jewels of film from 1985, The Breakfast simultaneous took the teen movie genre to new heights and smashed them at the same time. I don’t think another teen film prior to or since has captured the teen experience as well as this film. Hughes had some preternatural feel for the teen condition, for their trials and tribulations, even coming at it from a sizable distance – he was 35 when he made The Breakfast Club. Read More →