THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985) **** The actors are not perfect, especially when they yell, the dialogues are often brilliant but plagued by a few dead spots, the music is '80s but good within that severe limitation, not much happens....BUT! This is an incredibly ambitious film, misleading because it's a John Hughes and he made a number of light and entertaining teen films during the decade. This isn't one of them, this is cultural warfare of the sort that dull normal Americans had hoped was long past. The young actors are perfectly cast, it is surprising that all of them did not continue at this level, that in fact none ever got anywhere near it again. Judd Nelson looks to be a budding James Dean, Ally Sheedy a darker Audrey Hepburn, Emilio Estevez a lost Clint Eastwood, Molly Ringwald perhaps an incarnation from the Meryl Streep pool, Anthony Michael Hall....he looks to have invented a new genre of kinder, gentler antihero. Paul Gleason is a great foil for them all, an ordinary American who has sold out everything he has to Reagan ethics, to the point where he can't even think of why anyone would want to be one of the Beatles, and is even more perplexed as to why no one wants to be him. If you walk out of this film accepting that some people will never face down their culture, others will never face down their parents, and others will never think for themselves...but they are still basically good people, then you have taken the message to heart. If you follow it all and refuse to accept the impending failures of others you may have gained something even more special. Riddled with lines so brilliant that I laugh maniacally upon the tenth viewing. "I wanna be an Airborne Ranger!"
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