Film Review: The Breakfast Club

Film Review

The Breakfast club is a comedy and teen film made in 1985 and directed by john hughes. It features a group of teens who spend their saturday at school in detention, all of them having completely different personalities and following different high school cliques.
In the opening scene it shows a series of clips of a high school, to introduce a setting. In a couple of the clips it shows property that has been vandalised, suggesting that its a public, middle class school. The camera then shifts to the front of a BMW, the camera slowly pans up to present a girl, Claire Standish, and her father sitting in the car, the use of the expensive car immediately gives us insight into her class and spoiled character she will be. Next we see a side close up of Claire's face to see her expression, which is upset and sulky, with her dad behind her. the use of the camera in this position presents her to look bigger than her dad and show that she overpowers him. Whereas in the next shot we see a boy, brian, in a car but his time the camera is positioned so that his mother is in front and he is behind, suggesting that his parents overpower him.
There is a scene in the film when the camera shows a side shot of the characters running in the hallway - trying to avoid the principal - which highlights the characters personalities, as one of the characters, a girl who is considered weird and a social outcast (Allison), walks slowly and carelessly whilst the others run. This is one of the many scenes during the film that express diversion between the characters. Another is when they are eating their lunch in the library, the camera shows a front view of each of the characters as they pull out their lunches, each of them unique. Claire Standish pulls out sushi which is considered a high quality an expensive food, to present her as having high standards. Whereas Allison makes a sandwich consisting of cap'n crunch cereal and pixy stix, which is a weird combination and highlights the fact that she doesn't follow the norm. Later on however, as the plot progresses, they eventually all start to realise that they are more similar than they think, which is foreshadowed when they all begin whistling simultaneously together in the library.

Overall The Breakfast Club was received quite well by the public, receiving reviews such as "Despite its occasional heavy-handedness, the film is an earnest, engaging attempt at portraying teens and their problems in a a realist light," and " Teenage alienation? Check. Angst? Check." It also won the MTV Movie Silver Bucket of Excellence Award.



Comments

  1. Coulsdon A Level Film and Media10 December 2017 at 02:44

    This iOS one of my favourite films and John Hughes a top Director of mine as he somehow managed to capture the teen angst so well.

    Mya is this a review or an analysis it seems caught between the two, going forward lean towards the analysis. You seem to do this effortlessly with your description of the shot sizes and more importantly the reason you believe that Hughes has selected them. Try and start with GENRE lead to themes and that will normally give an outline of the film without having to resort to explaining the whole plot.

    I like this it shows promise or maybe i am biased by the film selection. Have you seen the rest of his work?

    ReplyDelete

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