The Breakfast Club

The film behaves as if it's dealing in soul-baring insights and emotional deepening. But it's only dealing in plastic. It's rare to encounter such unfailing falseness in a movie that seems to have been launched with benign intentions.

I suspect all these kids are going somewhere, and Hughes, of course, is already there.

Hughes is clearly of the impression that he knows a lot about kids and the way they think. He is, for the most part, mistaken... Yet this is a movie well worth seeing, if only for the performances, which are without exception excellent.

The movie is too crafty for its own good; its mixed ambitions often self-destruct... That doesn't mean that, in many ways, it's not a good movie, or that Hughes and his collaborators don't show a lot of talent and intelligence.

Hughes has a strong sense of reality, and his screenplay shows an understanding of the pressures faced by teen-agers. But rest assured that The Breakfast Club is essentially a comedy, with crunchy dialogue and amusing situations.

Nelson gives a performance that is wide-ranging and stellar. The Breakfast Club moves because of him. His role is a plum the equal of which he may never see again.

No list of the best teen films or best films of the 1980s is complete without including The Breakfast Club.

I can't remember ever wanting to applaud at the end of a movie, but the only reason I didn't after The Breakfast Club is that I was practically paralyzed with excitement. With this rousing new film... the Hollywood youth film finally comes of age.

It's almost worth sitting through a hundred of those exploitative, lame-brained teen farces in order to get to the warm and authentic intimacy of The Breakfast Club. It's a grand payoff.

The Breakfast Club is such a significant film, the fact that it's also a very good one is almost incidental. This movie is so "now" it's the future.