The Breakfast Club was released in 1985 and was a big coming-of-age film for my generation. The setup for the movie was pretty simple: five high school students from five completely different cliques — “a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal” — spend a Saturday in detention and find out that what they have in common far outshines what separates them.
As with most cultural artifacts, it’s a product of its time. The soundtrack and clothing clearly mark it as an ’80s film, and the scene where Molly Ringwald’s character has sushi for lunch is supposed to seem fashionable yet a little edgy to North American audiences of that era (many non-Japanese thought it was weird to eat raw fish, and I used to chide the sushi-squeamish by teasing them with “I know you’ve had worse things in your mouth”).
Could The Breakfast Club be remade today? Chris Rusche, creator of the webcomic Shotgun Shuffle doesn’t think so due to mobile technology:
He may have a point.
Here’s a bonus: the trailer!