The Breakfast Club Story Review

            The Breakfast Club is a multi – genre movie being both a comedy and a drama. The movie stars five of the members of the “Brat Pack” and shows us what it’s like in Saturday detention. While we are watching the film, we find out why each character is there and that they all have much more in common then they think.

            The movie starts off with a voice over by Brian as he tells us where they are and how he thinks Mr. Vernon is crazy for asking them to write an essay on who they think they are. Brian narrates as a first person point of view in the beginning of the film as well as the end of the film as answers Mr. Vernon’s essay question. Brian is the narrator because he is the only student who actually writes his essay and he writes his essay as one for all of them, not just himself. After he says his dialogue the movie then cuts right into the opening scene. Throughout the rest of the movie, it is told as third person point of view as we see all of the characters. The camera is hidden at a perfect angle so we see everything that is going on as if we were really there in the movie. We can also figure out what is going on between the scenes without being told.

            The Breakfast Club is presented as a realistic movie because it’s five high school students all in detention for punishment for what they did. But also because every teenager at some point has felt peer pressured or stereotyped in their life, whether it be from friends or from family, all of which are universal human traits. The movie is also presented chronologically, so we see everything from when each of the students get dropped off at school in the morning for detention to everything in between. This also gives us a realistic view for the movie as well.

            The movie also does a really great job of following the classical paradign. Meaning that there’s a protagonist, there’s the scenes, rising action, more scenes and then it finally reaches the climax, and then the resolution. The Breakfast Club can be identified as a “coming of age story” meaning that the movie focuses on a specific group, which in this case is teenagers and focuses on the characters change as well as their psychological and moral growth. The Breakfast Club’s narrative is “Classical Hollywood” style meaning that it follows a specific set of rules and falls somewhere between both realism and formalist. This type of style follows some basic key elements including: introducing the problem early in the movie, throughout the movie the characters work through the problem, creating a story, and finally at the end solving the problem.

            The Breakfast Club is definitely one of the most notable 80’s movies. Everything from the clothing to the music screams 80’s. The movie has taught us that everyone experiences peer pressure in someway.