The Movie
I guess I was an old man before my time, because even when The Breakfast Club was first released, I considered its deliberately skewed depictions of adolescence and dubious parenting rather off-putting. But for better or worse, the film made ripples across Hollywood and young America, as suddenly it became fashionable to vent about all of the crap that moms and dads dump on their kids.
It's Saturday morning detention at an affluent suburban high school, and a quintet of relative strangers, each culled conveniently from disparate social cliques, are thrown together for nine hours of soul-searching. Distant, defensive, even combative at first, the teens soon learn how much they all have in common, and they end the day in a very different place from there they started. But will they all return to their isolated social circles come Monday morning, or can these newly forged, against-the-odds friendships survive?
This was to be John Hughes first film as a director, owing to its simple, mostly-one-room setting, but fates conspired to make this his follow-up to Sixteen Candles instead. The Breakfast Club benefits from that additional wisdom and experience, allowing the writer/director to evolve skillfully from teen comedy to an angst-ridden teen drama, with humor.
The Picture
The 1.85:1 image is a little soft, a little grainy and the blacks can be somewhat mushy, flaws which we can largely attribute to the original film element. The picture is sharp enough that we can see Allison's tiny dandruff flakes snowing down upon her drawing, but elsewhere the books lining the library walls can be so blurry, they barely even look like books anymore. This one's only a slight notch above a good DVD presentation.
The Sound
The late John Hughes was all about the music, so he probably would have loved what DTS-HD Master Audio does for the tunes in The Breakfast Club. There's music (and not much else) in the rears, including the touch of echo to Bender's rendition of "I Want to Be an Airborne Ranger," but also a healthy bass level and a clean sonic punch. The garden variety dialogue re-recording was fine for its era, but now it has a dropped-in artificiality to it. Ditto the sound effects which often feel added, and not organic. And anyone expecting the explosion of the David Bowie quote in the beginning to be a great home theater moment will be disappointed.
The Extras
Co-stars Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall reunite for a jokey running audio commentary, proof that they didn't forget about each other and remained friends...? "Sincerely Yours" is a twelve-part celebration of all things Breakfast Club, with an emphasis on all of the major and supporting characters. Cast, crew, admirers across the industry, and experts come together to provide new interviews, 51-and-a-half minutes total.
"The Most Convenient Definitions: The Origins of the Brat Pack" shifts the focus off the movie per se, explaining the pop-culture phenomenon spawned shortly after the release of The Breakfast Club (five-and-a-half minutes). All of this video content is standard definition, borrowed like the audio commentary from the 2008 special edition DVD.
The disc also supports BD-Live, with Ticker function.
Final Thoughts
It's great to have this seminal '80s classic on Blu-ray, just in time for its silver anniversary, but the limited audio/video quality and lack of brand-new bonus material might tempt owners of the current DVD to forget about this one.
Product Details
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