The Breakfast Club

Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought.

• Director: John Hughes
• Genre:Drama
• Runtime:97 minutes

Cast

Emilio Estevez : Andrew Clark
Paul Gleason : Richard Vernon
Anthony Michael Hall : Brian Johnson
John Kapelos : Carl
Judd Nelson : John Bender

The plot follows five students at fictional Shermer High School in the widely used John Hughes setting of Shermer, Illinois,[1] as they report for Saturday detention on March 24, 1984. While not complete strangers, the five teenagers are all from a different clique or social group.

The five strangers, who seem to have nothing in common at first, come together at the high school library, where they are harangued and ordered not to speak or move from their seats by the antagonistic principal, Mr. Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason), and remain for a period of eight hours and fifty-four minutes (from 7:06 A.M. to 4 P.M.). He assigns a 1,000 word essay (in which each student must write about who they think they are) and then leaves them mostly unsupervised, returning only occasionally to check on them. Bender, who has a particularly negative relationship with Mr. Vernon, disregards the rules and riles the other students; mocking Brian and Andrew and sexually harassing Claire. Allison remains oddly quiet except for the occasional random outburst.

The students pass the hours in a variety of ways. Gradually they open up to each other and reveal their inner secrets (for example, Allison is a compulsive liar and Brian and Claire are ashamed of their virginity). They also discover that they all have strained relationships with their parents and are afraid of making the same mistakes as the adults around them. However, despite these developing friendships, the students are afraid that once the detention is over, they will return to their very different cliques and never speak to each other again. Read more

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